Splitting Bulls

By Joel Stein/Chicago

Not a good week to be in Chicago: 23 inches of snow and Jenny Jones wasn't doing any makeovers. The best thing the city had going was the free Gatorade at Harry Caray's restaurant and some of that was probably the nasty blue flavor. Not much consolation for losing the best basketball player ever.

But that wasn't all Chicago was losing, as it will begin to realize this week. Though Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf and general manager Jerry Krause knew that Michael Jordan and head coach Phil Jackson were unlikely to return, they had held out hope. And they couldn't stem the player exodus that would follow Jordan's retirement. Suddenly, with the season starting on Feb. 2, the Bulls had only four signed players. If they didn't do something fast, it was going to be really easy for opponents to double team Toni Kukoc, now their premiere player. Here's how it all fell apart.

MONDAY, JAN. 4: Reinsdorf flies to New York City for the final owners' meeting before the Jan. 6 deadline set for canceling the NBA season. From the plane he tries to call Jordan who, he discovers, is in the Bahamas playing golf. He phones Jordan's agent, David Falk, who can't reach his client. Reinsdorf then calls Jackson at his new house in upstate New York to ask whether he won't change his mind about coaching. Jackson pleasantly chuckles a no, probably holds back on offering a koan about one-year contracts.

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 6: At 6 a.m., after 12 hours of haggling, NBA commissioner David Stern and players' union director Billy Hunter reach an agreement. By mid-afternoon, the players ratify it. Bulls guard Steve Kerr, a free agent, arrives in New York for a players' meeting to discover the deal has been made. "All of a sudden, it focused: 'Wow. We all have to get jobs,'" he says. Kerr calls his agent, who has already received half a dozen offers. Kerr, though, wasn't going to consider other offers until he knew whether Jordan was returning. Bill Wennington, the Bulls' center and free agent, also in New York, says that if Jordan doesn't come back, he doesn't see a role for himself on the Bulls who "are going to try to rebuild for the future. It's going to be a lot of different players."

THURSDAY, JAN. 7: The NBA will not allow owners to call agents until Friday. In his office on the second floor of the Berto Center in Chicago, general manager Krause looks down at an empty practice floor. On his wall hangs a felt board listing every NBA team's players, categorized under lists: free agents, injured, on roster. Under the Bulls' on-roster section, it lists only Ron Harper, Toni Kukoc, Keith Booth and Randy Brown. Free agents: the 10 other players, including Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman. Below them are listed three draft picks the Bulls have not yet signed.

FRIDAY, JAN. 8: At 5 p.m. the NBA allows owners to call agents. There are many busy signals. NBA security officials are sent to every team's practice facilities to prevent management from talking directly to players before Jan. 18, the first official practice day. The Bulls' war room, a large conference space with six phones and a fax machine overlooking the practice court, is empty. From his house, outside Chicago, Krause calls Pippen's agent, Kyle Rote--because he's not yet allowed to talk to Pippen directly and also because Pippen despises Krause and hardly speaks to him. Krause then makes cursory calls to express interest in every player on the 1998 roster, including Dennis Rodman, whom he does not want if Jordan doesn't return.

SATURDAY AND SUNDAY, JAN. 9-10: Krause continues to call virtually every agent of everyone who has ever played a game of basketball in which score was kept.

MONDAY, JAN. 11: The Bulls' second draft pick, Corey Carr, takes his first practice in the Berto Center with 15 other NBA players, including ex-Bull, now Charlotte Hornet, B.J. Armstrong. Luc Longley practices, but sits out the scrimmages. "I'm a free agent," he shrugs. "I don't want to get hurt."

At noon Jordan phones Reinsdorf to say he's retiring. Jordan then calls commissioner Stern. At 10:45 p.m., Associated Press reports the news.

TUESDAY, JAN. 12: For a while, Krause and Reinsdorf take a break from the phone, in what they call a mourning period. "When you finally hear Michael Jordan is retiring, you don't just shake that off. That's 13 years of your life. You don't just go to Plan B," says Bulls p. r. director Tim Hallam.

WEDNESDAY, JAN. 13: During his press conference at the United Center, Jordan, sporting a bandaged finger that he hurt while cutting a cigar, says he made up his mind to retire at the end of last season, but kept quiet in order to support the union, which would have had a weaker position if it couldn't shake its premiere moneymaker in Stern's face. In the serious, unemotional, professional manner that characterized his career, Jordan says, "Right now, I don't have the mental challenges I've had in the past." His wife Juanita says he will do more car pooling.

THURSDAY, JAN. 14: The four Bulls work out with other NBA players. Longley no longer comes to practice. Kerr is at a speaking engagement. Krause is trying to sign Pippen, who under the new rules can be paid more by the Bulls than by a different team. Reinsdorf would then probably trade Pippen to another team, like Los Angeles, for some young talent, like Eddie Jones. Good luck. Krause is in more promising negotiations with free agent Brent Barry of the Miami Heat. Barry is a 6-ft. 6-in. white guy who can dunk. Kids in Chicago will probably not want to "be like Brent," but the free-agent market is shrinking quickly, with Jayson Williams re-upping with New Jersey. Meanwhile, Pippen is close to signing with Houston and Longley with Phoenix. Rodman's agent is talking to Los Angeles and Orlando. No word yet from the World Wrestling Federation.

FRIDAY, JAN. 15: The signing deadline is pushed back to Tuesday, mostly because someone figured out that Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and the league doesn't need any more bad publicity.

The Bulls announce that Tim Floyd, hired at the end of last season as Jackson's likely replacement, is finally anointed the new head coach. Until now, Floyd kept most of his stuff in boxes stacked up in the hall outside the coach's office and called himself a consultant. Chicago remains obsessed with Jordan's retirement. The Sun Times observes that he'd be a great politician. The Tribune, in a completely earnest front-page story, suggests that Jordan could become an astronaut.

Meanwhile, the four lonely Bulls, Ron Harper, Toni Kukoc, Keith Booth and Randy Brown, are facing a surreal adjustment to playing for a team unlikely to make the playoffs. The Bulls have suddenly become the NBA equivalent of the Florida Marlins: world champions who the following season have a second-rate crew that finish last. Steven Julius, the Bulls psychologist, says the four remaining Bulls will cope with their new status by continuing to think of themselves as defending champions. "Ron Harper can step up under adversity and even other pain," he says. "Toni Kukoc is a tough guy. He grew up in war-torn Croatia."

--Reported by Julie Grace/Chicago

With reporting by Julie Grace/Chicago