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Sixty-three points in a playoff game – and still a loss. On April 20, 1986, in Boston, Michael Jordan delivers one of the great individual performances in basketball history. His team loses 135–131 in double overtime and is swept out of the playoffs without a single win. The scene sums up the Chicago Bulls’ first years with Jordan: an outstanding player, but not yet a team that wins. An example of the Team Principle of Development.
The Best Player Is Not Enough
Situation
In the 1984 NBA Draft the Bulls take Michael Jordan third overall. In his first season he averages 28.2 points per game and is named Rookie of the Year. The Bulls improve from 27 to 38 wins and go out in the first round of the playoffs against Milwaukee. In 1985 Jerry Reinsdorf buys a majority stake in the club and Jerry Krause becomes general manager. In the 1985–86 season Jordan breaks his foot in the third game and misses 64 games. In 1986–87 he averages 37.1 points per game. The team wins 40 games, loses 42 and is again eliminated by Boston without a win.
Connection to the team principle
The Team Principle of Development says: a team is not made by its lineup but by time. The most important personnel decision in the club’s history had been made in 1984. Three seasons later the team still had a losing record. An exceptional player makes a team better, but he does not turn it into a team. The more Jordan scored, the clearer it became what was missing.
The Roster Grows – and Runs Into Detroit
Situation
The 1987 Draft brings Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant. In October 1987 Phil Jackson becomes an assistant coach under head coach Doug Collins. In 1987–88 Jordan is named the league’s Most Valuable Player and Defensive Player of the Year, and the Bulls win 50 games. In the Eastern Conference semifinals they lose to the Detroit Pistons in five games. In 1988 the Bulls trade Charles Oakley to New York and bring in center Bill Cartwright. Detroit defends Jordan according to a plan of its own, the “Jordan Rules”: hard, physical, with two or three defenders on him as soon as he has the ball. The Pistons knock the Bulls out three times in a row – in five games in 1988, six in 1989 and seven in 1990.
Connection to the team principle
From 1987 the future pillars of the team were on the roster. Even so, the title came only four years later. The three series against Detroit show why. The opponent had understood that you beat Chicago by stopping a single man. As long as that held true, Chicago was a star with supporting players. The numbers are striking: five games, six games, seven games. The Bulls lost three times, but each time by a narrower margin. These are defeats in which something grows.
A System for Five
Situation
In 1989 Collins is fired and Phil Jackson becomes head coach. Together with assistant Tex Winter he introduces the triangle offense, a system that spreads the ball among all five players. By Jackson’s own account, he wanted Jordan to take fewer shots so that his teammates would be more involved. Jordan, he says, hesitated at first and then bought in. In the 1989–90 season the Bulls win 55 games and lose to Detroit once again, this time in the Eastern Conference finals.
Connection to the team principle
A new system does not work on the day it is introduced. It takes a whole season – and one more defeat – before five players can move within it blindly. That requires trust in both directions: the star has to give up the ball, and his teammates have to be willing to take the decisive shot. Research supports this observation, within limits. In 2003 Susan A. Wheelan, Barbara Davidson and Felice Tilin compared work groups of different ages, including 26 groups with 180 members whose conversations they analyzed. Groups that had existed longer showed markedly less dependency and conflict and more work on the task. This is a correlation drawn from comparisons between groups. It does not follow that every group matures if you simply wait.
1991: The Breakthrough
Situation
In the 1990–91 season the Bulls win 61 games and lose 21, a club record at the time. In the playoffs they beat New York 3–0, Philadelphia 4–1 and defending champions Detroit 4–0. In the NBA Finals they defeat the Los Angeles Lakers 4–1. It is the first title in the club’s history, in Jordan’s seventh season. In the Finals Jordan averages 31.2 points and 11.4 assists per game. Five more titles follow: 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997 and 1998.
Connection to the team principle
The 11.4 assists are the most telling number in this story. The same player who lost with 63 points in 1986 wins in 1991 by scoring and by setting up his teammates. The result is not down to maturing alone. The roster had been rebuilt, the coach replaced, and Detroit had grown older. But between 1987 and 1989 almost all of these building blocks were already in place. What was still missing was the shared time in which building blocks become a structure.
Key takeaways
Key Lessons
- Don’t expect a top performer to work miracles on the team. They raise the level, but they do not replace shared development.
- Read defeats as a trend. Don’t just ask “Did we win or lose?” but “Was it closer than last time?”
- Give a new system at least one full cycle. Don’t judge it by its first few weeks.
- Talk to your strongest people about what the team needs from them: not more individual brilliance, but more assists.
- Keep the core together. Every change costs attunement that you then have to rebuild.
Summary
From 1984 the Chicago Bulls had the outstanding individual player of his era, and from 1987 his most important teammates. They won the title in 1991. In between came seven seasons, a coaching change, a new system of play and three defeats against the same opponent, each one closer than the last. In the 1991 Finals a team took the floor in which the best scorer was also the best playmaker. A team is not made by its lineup but by time.