Champions Creed

Chapter 150 149: Is the last dance really coming? (Please give me a monthly ticket!)

This is indeed a crazy summer, but what is even crazier than the various transfers is Scott Pippen.

He was like a child who had just reached adulthood and finally broken free from the constraints of his parents, starting to do whatever he wanted.

After Michael Jordan left, ESPN's radio station invited Pippen to participate in a talk show.

In the radio program, host Tony Bruno naturally would not miss the hottest topic.

After chatting for more than ten minutes, he decided to get straight to the point:
"Scott, what do you think about Michael Jordan leaving the Bulls? How does it affect you?"

Pippen couldn't help but smile when he heard this question, as if to say, "Oh my God, man, I've been waiting for this question for so long, and you finally have the guts to ask it."

"First of all, Michael certainly had the right to make such a decision. He was a free agent, and a free agent means you can freely choose the team you want to go to. But I still couldn't believe that Michael Jordan betrayed the Chicago Bulls. I even saw the news on TV before I knew that Michael Jordan decided to go to New York.

I mean, we played together for eight seasons, won three championships, and I was probably the one who sacrificed the most for this team, getting paid a pittance to do the dirty work every night to make sure Michael was in the spotlight.

We are not just teammates, our children are great playmates. My fiancée encourages Jordan's somewhat introverted second son Marcus every day, telling him, 'Work hard, the future is yours,' making him more and more confident.

So, I think given our relationship, Michael could at least tell me in advance to show respect to me. When you go to a party at a friend's house and leave, you will also say hello to the host, right?
But Michael seemed to be just leaving a motel where he had been staying for a few days and didn't even bother to take the room card.

This made me feel that our previous friendship was all a fake, it made me feel that Michael was very hypocritical, and it made me feel betrayed.

The impact on me? The impact on me is probably that I will never be so stupid to sacrifice for others again. Look at where I am now. I am in a rebuilding team, but I did nothing wrong, and this is the result of sacrificing for others. "

Tony Bruno was stunned for a second. He thought Pippen's answer would be "Man, you know, Michael is an extremely good player, I wish him all the best." He thought Pippen would say something nice like that.

As a result, Pippen actually fired directly at Jordan, giving Jordan no face at all.

He said Jordan betrayed the Bulls and was hypocritical. Did he know how much impact his answer would have?
Jordan did not tell Pippen in advance before signing with the Knicks, because he felt that when the team did not give him an annual salary of 3000 million, everyone would know the result.

Moreover, Jordan called Pippen after signing with the Knicks.

But in Pippen's view, if you call me after something has happened, is that any different from me watching the news on TV? That's not respectful at all.

Tony Bruno continued to ask: "Will you hate Michael for this?"

"Hate? No, not really, but we all saw the real Michael. In all the years I played for the Bulls, I never saw a free agent come to the Bulls and say he wanted to play with Michael. What I want to say is that Michael is not as perfect as the outside world imagines. Many people don't even want to play with him. This incident proves that he is not perfect.

He was never perfect, and a lot of what's in the book 'The Jordan Rules' is true."

Good, good, Pippen actually mentioned the "God's Forbidden Book" "The Jordan Rules". Tony Bruno is now sure that his show today will be a hit!
"So Scott, do you think Michael can have the same Chicago-level success in New York?"

"So what if he can succeed or not? The Bulls' success comes from a team, not Michael Jordan alone. Even if the Knicks succeed, it is not the credit of Michael Jordan alone. So, I will not comment on whether he can succeed or not. That would be disrespectful to other Knicks players. Over the past many years, the Bulls players have endured such disrespect."

Tony Bruno finally discovered that Pippen came to rebel today!

It was the first time he discovered that Pippen had always been so resentful of Jordan.

For the first time, I realized that Jordan and Pippen’s relationship was not close at all.

Pippen has completely stopped pretending. He dared to be angry but not speak out for so many years. Now that Jordan is no longer in Chicago, what else is there for him to be afraid of saying?
Moreover, Pippen was indeed very angry. In his opinion, a contract worth 2500 million a year was not too much.

I only make 225 million this season!
That bastard is already so rich, is there any need for him to abandon himself for a mere 500 million?

If he could win more championships, Pippen felt that the amount of his next contract would definitely be higher.

But what now? What should I do with my contract renewal?
That selfish bastard!
Well, Pippen, who complained about Jordan's selfishness, deliberately had surgery before the start of the season in the summer of 97 in order to force the team to give him a big contract, regardless of the safety of the team's second three consecutive championships. This led to a breakdown in his relationship with Jordan, and they no longer even had the appearance of being brothers.

So, people all have double standards.

But one thing is certain - no matter what, the relationship between Michael Jordan and Pippen will not end well.

Pippen's bold and unreserved firing made him the focus of the entire country for the second time. The first time was when he was beaten up by Roger in the locker room.

All media are hotly discussing the relationship between Jordan and Pippen, and what the real Michael Jordan is like.

As a result, just a few days after the Pippen incident, Horace Grant also opened fire.

After transferring to Dallas, Grant accepted an exclusive interview with TNT.

During the interview, the host asked the question, "What is the difference between Michael and Roger in leading the team?"

Horace Grant was almost unanimously praising Roger, and at the same time, he criticized Jordan:

"Roger is a true leader who helps everyone on the team. As we all know, Sarunas Marciulionis scored 3 points in the third quarter of Game 15 of the Finals and was the key to our second championship. He is now a known quality championship puzzle.

But the fact is that Sarrou was not in good shape when he first joined the team at the beginning of the season. I felt like he didn't know what to do when he was on the court.

It was Roger who helped him and had a conversation with him. I don't know what the conversation was about, but Saroo changed from then on, he focused on winning, became the best three-point shooter on our team, and then he shined in the finals.

And Shaq, who had a lot of trouble last season, was always there for him, encouraged him, and accompanied him. Finally, we got a Shaq who was in great form in the playoffs.

He was willing to stand up for Derek McKay and beat up Scott Pippen and Dennis Rodman.

He was willing to joke around with all of us and brought us together as a real team.

As for Michael, he was a tyrant, not a leader. No one in the locker room could say anything bad about Jordan. If you said anything, he would try to destroy your character. Looking at his character, there was nothing that could drive us to win.

If I had to rate the difficulty of being teammates with them from 1 to 100, Roger would be a 1, and Michael? I'd give it 101!

I mean, Michael is a superstar, but who's the better leader? Roger, hands down. And Roger will be able to achieve more than Michael in the future."

The comments of Pippen and Horace Grant did affect Jordan's perfect image. Because if only one person complained about you, you could say it was revenge or prejudice.

But since both former teammates expressed dissatisfaction with Jordan, that might really be Jordan's problem.

The interviews with Pippen and Grant actually point to one thing - Michael Jordan is not as perfect as advertised, he is also a god with many shortcomings.

This summer, Jordan's divinity is still declining step by step.

Jordan didn't care about Pippen and Horace Grant's firing.

Can he and Pippen be considered friends? Never, at most they are colleagues with a relatively good relationship. And colleagues are like this, even if they enter each other's body, they will not really enter each other's life, so how can they be considered close?
As for Grant, they had long since stopped speaking to each other.

Michael Jordan turned a deaf ear to these voices and was still sweating in his breakfast club.

As he gets older, he has to spend more energy and money to maintain his body.

David Falk came to see Jordan today. He couldn't believe that this was a man who was surrounded by honors, financially free, and already 34 years old.

Why is he still working so hard? Why doesn't he just retire and enjoy life?
Making money? Jordan got enough from Nike to ensure that he had enough food and clothing.

Now Falk can understand why David Robinson was surprised when he heard the news of Jordan's return: "I don't know why he came back."

What drove that guy was purely the desire to win.

But now there is a problem: his desire to win has pushed him to the edge of the cliff.

Falk came here to talk to Jordan about this.

Jordan, who had just finished strength training, saw Falk. He wiped his sweat and drank water. Falk took the initiative to walk to Jordan's side:
“How can I see the body and feel it?”

"Very well, any news for me?"

“Not good news.”

"tell me the story."

"The sales of AJ12 did not meet expectations. After Roger started selling sneakers under his own brand this year, the gap between him and us is getting smaller. Since Larry Miller joined Roger's team, their sneaker design level has improved significantly. You know, he has many top sneaker designers willing to work for him. I heard that Roger will shoot a movie this summer to continue promoting his own brand of sneakers."

David Falk admitted that Nike made a mistake by letting Larry Miller go.

His move of letting Roger sell sneakers under his personal brand was a smart one. After all, the tone of the Reebok brand is not as cool as Nike in the fields of fashion and basketball. This is why many people are reluctant to buy Roger's sneakers because the brand value is not enough.

This problem was solved by using Roger's personal brand. In simple terms, if Volkswagen built a luxury car, they would definitely put an Audi logo on it instead of putting their own Volkswagen logo on it.

Even though everyone knows that Audi is a sub-brand of the Volkswagen Group, more people are willing to choose Audi for the same price of 30 yuan.

This is roughly the effect achieved after Roger's brand became independent.

Jordan glanced at Falk and replied, "Don't worry."

Jordan knew that David Falk was not here to talk to him about sneakers. What they were actually talking about was influence.

As far as Jordan knows, O'Neal also launched his own independent brand this summer.

But what about sales? Not even AJ's taillights can be seen.

Although centers don't sell shoes, even if O'Neal was a guard, his shoes wouldn't sell well because his influence wasn't as great as Roger and Jordan's. The sales of AJs were hindered not because of Roger's independent brand or the design of the shoes. At least, those weren't the main reasons.

The real root cause is that Jordan's own influence is declining.

Falk saw that Jordan understood what he meant, so he stopped hiding it and said, "You don't understand Michael. This may be our last chance. If we lose again this season, we have to cut our losses in time."

“What does it mean to stop loss in time?”

"Let me put it another way. Although you lost to Roger twice and your influence has declined, your past glories have kept our influence at the top.

But if, I just say if, you still lose the game after the transfer, then our influence may not be at the top. So, this is our last chance, our influence can't decline any further, if we lose again this season."

"You mean, if I lose again this season, I'd better retire? To prevent my influence from declining further?"

David Falk didn't say anything, he agreed.

That’s true. How cool it would be if Michael Jordan never came back and his last image to the world was the legendary three consecutive championships.

His career after his comeback made him look more like an ordinary person, mixed with some not-so-pleasant memories in the minds of fans, and damaged the historical status of his career.

Every time Jordan loses, his influence decreases again.

If you don't fight, you won't lose.

Losing three times in a row is the limit.

If he can't win this year, Falk thinks Jordan can't take any more risks.

Seeing that David Falk did not answer, Jordan asked again: "Does Nike mean the same thing?"

The difference between Jordan and many other players is that some players rely on Nike to create influence, but for Jordan, Nike relies on him to create influence. This is fundamentally different.

If Jordan's influence continues to decline, so will Nike.

"We are discussing this matter." David Falk's words sounded lacking in confidence.

Jordan sighed. What happened this damn summer?
His shoe sales were declining, the Bulls wouldn't listen to him anymore, and even the likes of Scott Pippen and Horace Grant were talking down to him.

If he loses for the fourth or fifth time, Michael Jordan will become a complete mortal.

Jordan knows this, so he must win this season.

This time, it was truly the last dance. If he lost, he wouldn't even have a chance to do it again.

After that, Michael Jordan continued his training, repeating those familiar movements over and over again.

After a set of shooting drills, Jordan shook his finger at Falk: "Don't be so pessimistic, David, no one can make me retire!"

At this time, Roger didn't know that his presence would most likely bring the last dance forward.

Roger is training in a training ground built just for him by Universal Pictures.

David Falk was right, Roger is going to make a movie too.

When Warner was about to release "Space Jam", Universal Pictures also wanted to make its own basketball movie, and Reebok happened to need a soft advertising movie to promote Roger's sneakers, so the two sides hit it off.

Unlike the live-action + animation model of "Space Jam", Universal Pictures' movie about Roger will be performed entirely by real people, and many NBA stars will be invited to participate.

The plot is about a kid who picked up a pair of worn-out Roger sneakers, and after putting them on, he gained all of Roger's abilities, and then entered the NBA and won the championship with Roger.

Yes, this plot is very familiar. It is the plot of the movie "Jordan's Successor".

However, this time the script was snatched away by Universal Pictures. Considering Roger's experience in filming "The Hard Knocks" and its extremely high popularity, Universal Pictures and Reebok are very confident that it can be made into a hit sports movie.

During the filming of the movie, Roger also invited the stars who were filming the movie with him to play some games to keep himself competitive.

In the following period of time, you could see almost all the stars participating in the filming gave Roger extremely high praise in front of the media.

Jason Kidd talked about his experience of filming a movie with Roger in an interview with Slam Magazine:

"He has an amazing willpower. I don't know how Roger does it. I don't know how he shoots all day and still has the energy to train for three hours and then play with us for 40 minutes. The next morning at about six or seven o'clock, Roger will call you again to ask you to train. I don't know how he does it. He is an incredible guy!"

The rebellious No. 1 pick Allen Iverson also talked about that time when he appeared on a TV show:
"I've never seen an athlete as competitive as him. He always takes the initiative to defend me every time we play, and he takes it very seriously. I mean, we're just playing a game in between filming a movie. It's not about championships, winning or losing, and there's not even any fans. But he still guards me seriously every round and talks trash to me. He's like a monster who was afraid of losing in his previous life and has an obsessive desire to win in this life.

But even though Roger was fierce on the field, behind the scenes he was very nice to all of us.”

These stars' comments unknowingly caused Roger's popularity and personal charm to soar wildly.

Who doesn’t like a star who takes the game seriously, has a strong desire to win, but is kind to others in private?

Compared to Michael Jordan, who was wildly dissed by his former teammates, people's love for Roger has reached the point where he can almost replace him.

This summer, you can see a clear gap: Michael Jordan is stepping down, while Roger is moving up!

So for Jordan, he really reached a watershed moment.

Once upon a time, his status was far above Roger.

This summer, you could say they were close to even.

The status between them began to reverse.

How long will Michael Jordan's previous accumulation last?
Legend No. 23 is really on the verge of complete collapse.

He really has to face this cruel last dance!
-
Dominic Wilkins, the human film star who was on a plane returning to the United States, couldn't help laughing when he saw the comments about Roger in the newspaper.

"I think Roger will be a great guy to get along with, and we might actually be able to make it work. I can't wait to get to practice and play for the Magic."

Next to Wilkins, his agent Steve Kaufman was a little worried.

When it comes to Dominique Wilkins, the first thing that comes to your mind is probably his powerful and violent dunks and impressive statistics.

But that's not all the movie's highlights are.

Some other things Steve Kaufman knew: Dominique Wilkins had a rather arrogant personality, had never liked passing the ball or defending, and lacked discipline in his playing.

Bill Walton once commented on the defense of the film "Can anyone make him sweat on the defensive end?"

Kenny Smith played basketball in Atlanta for half a year. He once said in a TV show that Wilkins was a nice guy. The host jokingly asked Kenny, "Nice guy? Damn, after you passed the ball to Dom (Wilkins), did he pass it back to you?"

Kenny Smith didn't answer, but just laughed awkwardly.

When the Dream Team was being formed, the team actually considered Highlights of the Movie, after all, he is one of the iconic figures in the NBA.

But the USA Basketball Association believed that "he has the muscles and nerves of a great defender, but lacks the will to use them", so it eliminated him.

These are the things hidden behind Dominique Wilkins' gorgeous dunks and beautiful statistics.

In the past in Atlanta, he was the team's top star, so he could focus on converting the ball into points and focusing on making the fans scream with his dunk performances.

Not being able to pass the ball or defend doesn't seem to be an unacceptable flaw.

When he rewards the fans with explosive dunks and 30-point performances every game, who cares about his defense and passing? Who cares about his gambling steals and blocks that ignore discipline?

But next, Dominique Wilkins went to the Magic to be a role player.

Given Roger's character of not having excessive respect for veterans, can he tolerate Wilkins' shortcomings?
It's hard to say.

Besides, is Roger really a good person?
Although the media has been praising Roger to the skies recently, Steve Kaufman has not forgotten that he beat up Pippen shortly after joining the team two years ago, that Roger told the team in the 94 Eastern Conference Finals "We don't need Michael from now on", and that he has not forgotten Jordan's titanium eye sockets.

I have not forgotten what words Steve Smith used to describe Roger when the Magic eliminated the Hawks in the playoffs last season, and how much he resisted being his teammate.

In today's public opinion, people may have forgotten these brutal moments of Roger, but Kaufman remembers them all!
Steve Kaufman only believes in one thing: those who can have the last laugh in the cruel competition of the NBA are usually not good people in the true sense.

This includes Roger.

So looking at Wilkins who was extremely eager to go to Orlando, Steve Kaufman gently reminded him:
"Be careful, Dom. After all, we are next to a lion. When you go to Orlando, no matter what happens, you must not challenge Roger. And then, play well."

Dominic Wilkins did not answer. He was completely immersed in the fantasy of a bright future and did not listen to his agent's words at all.

A gentle leader, a championship within reach.

Perfect, so perfect.

(End of this chapter)