history

Sam Smith

He's a three-time NBA champion and was voted a starter for an All-Star game. He's one of the best three-point shooters in NBA history. He's the most successful No. 18 draft pick in Bulls history.

"I had a sense I was going to go one of three places, Seattle, Philadelphia or the Bulls," B.J. Armstrong, the Bulls No. 18 selection in the 1989 NBA draft, was saying the other day when reminded about his draft. "I really didn't have a preference. I just said I was going to have an opportunity to play in the NBA, and I really didn't care where that was at. It wasn't like I don't want to play here, I want to play there. I just wanted an opportunity."

That opportunity turned into a six-year run with the Bulls, three NBA titles and a starting spot on the 1994 Eastern Conference All-Star team.

Michael Jordan and BJ Armstrong talk during a game against the Boston Celtics circa 1991 at the Boston Garden.

The Bulls Thursday have the No. 18 selection in this year's NBA draft. They can only hope their choice becomes as successful as Armstrong, who was one of two all-time No. 18 picks for the Bulls. The other was in 1976 when No. 18 was in the second round. It was Willie Smith, a high scoring University of Missouri guard who played briefly for the Bulls in 1976 before a few limited appearances in four NBA seasons.

Armstrong became a vital reserve contributor for the 1991 and 1992 Bulls champions and then a starter for the 1993 title team. And then an All-Star the following year during Michael Jordan's first retirement when Armstrong averaged a career high 14.8 points per game.

Armstrong also was something of a case study for the vagaries of the draft, who takes you, where you are taken and how that team's composition. Armstrong offers no regrets about an 11-year NBA career that ended with the Bulls in 2000. Armstrong then worked in basketball operations for the Bulls and then as a player representative with Wasserman Media Group.

Armstrong, 6-2 and slightly built and tough like Curry, was one of the elite three-point shooters in college and then in the NBA. Armstrong shot 52 percent on threes as a sophomore at the University of Iowa and almost 45 percent for his collegiate career. When he finally became a full-time Bulls starter, he led the NBA in three-point shooting that season and then during the next three years finished in the top five twice and the other season ninth. He's essentially tied with Curry all-time among NBA three-point shooters with most ahead of them spot-up specialists like Steve Kerr, Jason Kapono and Tim Legler. While Curry and Armstrong directed offenses.

BJ Armstrong shoots a long-distance shots against Philadelphia in 1993.

But unlike Curry who went to one of the worst teams in the league without an All-Star and where he could expand his game without fear of consequences, Armstrong joined the star-studded Bulls with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen with the team was on the verge of playing for a title. Curry also went to play for the free-style, iconoclatic coach Don Nelson. Armstrong joined the system-oriented Bulls with Tex Winter's triangle offense. And Jordan.

So Armstrong played his designated role. He got to wear three championship rings. Though you also wonder as not only an elite shooter but a playmaker like Curry what would have been if Seattle at No. 17 had selected Armstrong. They probably don't wonder since they got the steal of that draft with Shawn Kemp at No. 17. Kenny Payne was selected at No. 19 and Jeff Sanders to the Bulls at No. 20. That was the draft the Bulls had the No. 6 pick from a prior trade and selected Stacey King.

It's also little recalled that in his Bulls tenure Armstrong was the team's iron man. He missed one game in his six years with the Bulls. And that was a DNP-CD in his rookie season when Jackson elected to keep taller player on Magic Johnson throughout The game instead of the usual substitution pattern. Armstrong played all 82 games his next six years in the NBA, including 1995-96 when he was left unprotected in the expansion draft and eventually traded to the Golden State Warriors.

"I wanted to be a pro, and to me that meant to show up. When I was in high school my grandmother always demanded I show up," Armstrong said. "She always said, 'No matter what, you have to show up.' In high school I never missed a day. She always said, ‘If you want to be good at your job, you show up.' That was my mentality. That was more than just being there. In my neighborhood, if you laid 40 on me, I was going to run it back on you. That stayed with me, being there. I wanted to be at every practice, every game. I wanted to be available and live with the results. What I could not live with was not showing up, not being ready. I just wanted to play."

BJ Armstrong was drafted by the Bulls with the No. 18 selection in the 1989 NBA Draft

The other curiosity about Armstrong's Bulls career is that he grew up and learned to play as a Piston. He was from Detroit and he learned from playing against pros like the Pistons' John Long, Bill Laimbeer, Rick Mahorn, Terry Tyler, Isiah, all the Bad Boys. And then be ready to be called by the NBA.

"I had seen all the horror stories where these guys, supposed to be No. 1 player in country, and they didn't make it," Armstrong said. "I had seen so many who were better than me, but their mentality was an issue. They didn't make it because of other, off the court things, didn't have the discipline, didn't work, bad practice habits. I had seen all of this. So I just wanted to make sure when my opportunity came I was ready.

"I grew up all Detroit. Detroit was everything; my identity was Detroit," said Armstrong. "How we played was how those teams played; that's what embodied Detroit. It's how we all wanted to play. I didn't know the game was physical. It's just how we played. I remember thinking (about the Bad Boys reputation), ‘I didn't know this was a thing.'"

So perhaps it was no surprise that what many Bulls from that first championship season called the seminal moment of the regular season was the team's first win in Auburn Hills, which came just before the 1991 All-Star break. It became the catalyst for the big post All-Star and post season season runs that swept through to the first title. Armstrong was the star of that game with clutch, late shots off the bench. Bad Boys? Not to him.

It was a no fear attitude. Armstrong wore No. 11 in high school, the number of his hero, Isiah Thomas. But he changed to No. 10 during high school after a talk with his coach.

"He told me, ‘At some point you'll face the best players in the world and you better be ready,'" Armstrong remembered. "‘You can't have fear or give in.'"

The Bulls perhaps got a little fortunate before that draft. Armstrong broke his left hand in one of the predraft camp games and couldn't do individual team workouts. So he slipped and the Bulls grabbed hm at No. 18.

"They were saying if you played well you'd go higher," Armstrong said. "I wasn't concerned. I was naive. I didn't say to get in the first round, the lottery. I just wanted a chance. I felt if I could get on the floor, I can do the rest."

So what will the Bulls' No. 18 selection this year be saying and thinking?

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BJ Armstrong reflects on being drafted by Chicago in 1989

Bulls.com

Sam Smith breaks down the career of three-time Champion Toni Kukoc and why he needs to be in the Hall of Fame.

The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Tuesday revealed its finalists for the 2021 Hall of Fame class. Bill Russell, the NBA's first Black coach and first Black coach to win an NBA championship, was among the nominees in the coach category. Russell with 11 championships as a player was enshrined for his playing contributions in 1975.

The Hall of Fame, however, has yet to enshrine professional basketball's other 11-time playing champion, Toni Kukoc.

Toni Kukoc deserves to be in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. It's perhaps the gravest oversight in the history of the grand institution and an insult to worldwide basketball.

The final Class of 2021 will be revealed May 16 with selections from the so called "direct elect" committees, which include the International Committee, Men's and Women's Veterans Committees, the Early African American Pioneer Committee and the Contributor Committee. Kukoc's candidacy is considered by the International Committee.

It has previously enshrined five of the so called "Big Six" of 1980s international basketball. They led to the creation and need for the 1992 Olympic USA Dream Team and the procession of international players who are among the best in the NBA today.

Those six were Vlade Divac, Dino Radja, Drazen Petrovic, Sarunas Marciulionis, Arvydas Sabonis and Kukoc.

Kukoc may have been the most successful in Europe with eight worldwide championships as a player, four times Yugoslavia champion, Italian League champion and three times Euroleague champion. Kukoc also was a member of three NBA championships with the Bulls.

But it was his sacrifice to accommodate the best interests of the Bulls that likely diminished his Hall of Fame possibilities.

The 6-11 Kukoc in Europe was in modern NBA parlance a wing, point forward player. For comparison, Kukoc then was Luka Doncic, the clever ballhandler and finisher who was an excellent long range shooter and passer. That position was basically filled on the Bulls by Scottie Pippen.

The Bulls needed a power forward given the unreliability of Dennis Rodman, who because of injuries and suspensions missed 45 games his first two Bulls seasons in 1996 and 1997. So Kukoc, the 1990 Bulls second round draft pick whose discovery helped make Jerry Krause a Hall of Famer, became a power forward in the era of Barkley, Malone and Kemp.

And then when Pippen missed the first half of the 1997-98 season after surgery, Phil Jackson said Kukoc was instrumental in helping hold that team together.

"He was a terrific player who has been overlooked," Jackson told me.

Kukoc driving against Lakers forward Robert Horry in December 1997.

Though Kukoc was technically a Sixth Man and won the NBA award in 1996, he made more than 80 starts for the Bulls during those three championship seasons. But because he was considered to be a reserve player, he was curiously overlooked by the International Committee when it added players of lesser impact, certainly in the NBA, like Radja, Marciulionis and Divac. Kukoc was the only one to play for an NBA champion.

Kukoc started every game in the 1998 Finals in place of Rodman and was third on the team in scoring, less than a point behind Pippen and led the team in three pointers. Kukoc averaged 22.5 points on 18 of 27 shooting and five of eight on threes in the last two games for the 1998 title playing more than 42 minutes in each game. He was known for making clutch game winners for the Bulls, like the 1994 playoff winner against the Knicks when Pippen sat out. In the 1996 Finals, Kukoc started two games and scored in double figures in all six games.

Kukoc celebrates winning the 1996 NBA Title with a victory over the Seattle Sonics.

And then there was Kukoc's unprecedented international resume.

Kukoc was Euroscar Player of the Year five times, the award for the best male European basketball player no matter where they are playing. The only six-time winners were Dirk Nowitzki and Sabonis. Among those winning fewer times were Pau Gasol. Kukoc won the media's Mr. Europa Player of the Year award three times, which was the most ever, more than Sabonis, Divac, Petrovic, Gasol and Nowitzki. Kukoc was Euroleague Final Four MVP three times, the Finals top scorer once, FIBA World Championship MVP and Eurobasket MVP.

Kukoc played on three Bulls championship teams, four Yugoslavian championship teams, an Italian League champion and three Euroleague champions, essentially the lead player on eight championship teams and a vital contributor to three NBA titles.

Players and coaches with 11 championships are basketball elite, like Russell, Jackson and Geno Auriemma in college. Henri Richard was part of 11 championship teams in hockey and Yogi Berra was as a player, manager and coach on 13 in baseball. All are Hall of Famers. It's a short list. No one associated with as many or more championships other than Kukoc hasn't been suitably and appropriately acknowledged.

Most of the top MVP candidates in the NBA this season, by the way, are international players, including Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Doncic. We now understand how exceptional professional basketball can be in Europe and around the world. Kukoc and the other pioneers are their competitor ancestors and role models.

Americans aren't so arrogant about the game anymore. Not like they once were, though it took creating the NBA's best team ever to counter the threat of the Europeans who were routinely beating the top American collegians. And this at a time when Europe was at war and countries (and teams) were being broken up.

"We started beating Americans all the time," Kukoc told me last year when he talked about the European legacy. "Italy with the junior nationals beating them soundly, Seattle (Goodwill Games). We figured, ‘OK, these are the guys we are beating every time we play them. These are the guys who are going to be the top draft picks, the future All-Stars, the guys who are going to carry the league. And we are beating them.' So it is time for us. We were sure we could play in the NBA. But even when we came here people were like, ‘They all are soft and don't play defense and they don't rebound.' Nobody said we had so many different skills other people don't. I wish I would have come here with a coach who said, ‘Here is the ball, we trust your decisions.' Like you see now with (Luka) Doncic, with (Nikola) Jokic, Giannis (Antetokounmpo). They weren't ready for us then."

The NBA now is trying to figure out how to catch up with them.

I did a podcast recently promoting Kukoc's Hall of Fame candidacy for Pod of Fame.

Maybe it might have been 12 titles If Larry Brown wasn't so impatient.

Kukoc, the native of Croatia who now is a special advisor and ambassador for the Bulls, stayed with the Bulls one more season after the championships, the 50-game 1998-99 season.

He averaged 18.8 points and seven rebounds, his Bulls highs in about 37 minutes per game starting. During the following season, he was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers, who were in need of a playmaker and supplemental scorer to team with Allen Iverson. Kukoc seemed ideal and the 76ers got off to the best start in the league in 2000-01 and were 40-14. But center Theo Ratliff hurt his wrist and was due to be out about a month. Rather than wait, Brown persuaded the 76ers to trade for Atlanta's Dikembe Mutombo. The 76ers did get to the Finals, but then lost in five games to the Lakers as Shaquille O'Neal battered Mutombo. Kukoc went to Atlanta in the trade. Could it have made a difference for the 76ers?

The rest of that season with Atlanta, Kukoc produced his best NBA statistics playing his natural role, averaging 19.7 points and shooting 48 percent on threes. He would have been difficult to defend in the Finals. Kukoc finished his NBA career with four seasons off the bench in Milwaukee because he didn't want to displace his family from the north suburbs of Chicago.

Toni Kukoc was a special basketball player, one of the world's greatest. The Hall of Fame presented finalists Tuesday. It's finally time for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, named for a Canadian, to provide an assist for Toni Kukoc.

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Sam Smith: Toni Kukoc deserves to be in the Hall of Fame

Sam Smith pays tribute to "The Original Bull" Jerry Sloan, who's No. 4 hangs in the rafters at the United Center.

Jerry Sloan died Friday. They need to lower the flags here in Chicago for the Basketball Hall of Famer who was enshrined in 2009 for his winning career as Utah Jazz coach. Because Jerry Sloan in his crusty stoicism evoked the spirit and culture of this great city perhaps better than any.

Because Jerry Sloan was about work. Nothing fancy. He wasn't the most talented or the most famous. He didn't possess the seismic natural gifts. The glare of attention didn't come his way. Better than a hard hat, he actually did come to work in a John Deere cap. Sloan's game even resembled a tractor, determined, relentless, austere and reliable.

Jerry Sloan, No. 4, was the first Bulls player to have his number retired. There wasn't much grace associated with Jerry. Unless you delight in watching someone take a charge or charge at Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt was the strongest and most feared player of his day. Players ran from Wilt. Jerry ran toward him, leaping in front of Wilt to take a charge and then leaping up in front of a glaring Wilt to challenge, "I'm not scared of you!"

Jerry Sloan made you smile amidst the mayhem.

Many played the game better and were more successful. Though he minimized it publicly, it haunted Jerry into his retirement of failing to win a championship for the Bulls with some of the franchise's greatest and most overlooked teams in the 1970s. He'd say decades later how he regretted not winning a championship "for those fans."

But Jerry was a winner. And he brought such joy in perhaps saving professional basketball for Chicago as an original Bull in 1966. Sloan's pride and passion produced a style of play that celebrated Chicago as few have. It highlighted the soul of the city. Chicago stands for work as much as New York represents finance and Los Angeles glamor. The great labor movements of the 19th Century began in Chicago. The working man finally began to hold his head high and gain some respect in Chicago, the Haymarket Affair and Pullman strike being vital pieces of the bold tapestry of the American labor movement.

Chicago basketball appropriately glorifies Michael Jordan and the 1990s champions, much regarded as among the few best teams in American sports history. That was emphasized with the recent showing of the 10-part Last Dance documentary.

No one will do a documentary of Sloan's 1970s Bulls, a rollicking rambunctious group led by Sloan with Stormin' Norman, Butterbean and Chet the Jet. They had the names if not the fame. They never could get past the giants of the era, Wilt and Kareem, despite seasons with up to 57 victories and brutal and oh-so-close playoff series. But if there were a documentary, it might be titled "Cutting in." Because that's who those guys and Sloan were, the guys who might interrupt the glossy proceedings so the overlooked little guys could have their chance.

You know if the Bulls ever had won that title back then, they'd have been spraying beer all over the locker room.

Champagne! Are you kidding? Gimme a break!

Jerry Sloan's No. 4 retired in the rafters at Chicago Stadium.

Sloan, 78, revealed in 2016 he had Parkinson's disease and Lewy body dementia. Sloan never was one to seek attention, but he said people were asking. So he told Steve Luhm of the Salt Lake City Tribune, "I don't want people feeling sorry for me." That was Jerry. Nothing to see here. Keep moving.

It's what he did, constantly moving from the two-mile walk after morning chores from the Gobbler's Knob farm in rural southern Illinois to the main road where he could hitchhike to the one-room schoolhouse to Dick Motta's early version of the triangle offense. That wonderful Bulls team lacked the talent of a Jordan. Which generally makes the ultimate difference. But there were so many eerie similarities from its impregnable defensive wall to its relentless offensive movement with few plays, the offense mostly responding to defensive actions. It played deliberately featuring the offensive forwards, Chet Walker and Bob Love, because there wasn't a center in Tom Boerwinkle to match the Goliaths of the game. Opponents understood it wasn't just a contest. It was a reckoning to face Sloan and those Bulls.

Because the first introduction was to the ubiquitous guards, Sloan and Van Lier, waiting, in your face, annoying, impatient and uncompromising. They were the scourge of the NBA. I'd love to see Norm's No. 2 up there sometime right beside Jerry's No. 4. Chet's No. 25, also.

Jerry Sloan is the Bulls history. He is Mr. Bull.

He came to the Bulls in the 1966 expansion draft and remained through 1976, the starting shooting guard for 10 opening days, at 6-5 the team's leading rebounder and handing off the Bulls to the modern NBA era. He made a pair of All-Star teams and six all-defensive teams, though individual honors and statistics never was what Jerry Sloan was about.

He isn't among the leaders on many all-time Bulls franchise lists anymore, other than minutes and games played. Though the 6-5 Sloan is fifth alltime in total rebounds. No one else among that top 10 is under 6-8.

He was mostly about being there for his teammates. Like the game against Kareem's favored Bucks shortly before they stopped the Lakers record 33-game winning streak. It was a rare Chicago Stadium home sellout, among just four that season. Jerry's not missing that. Sloan's sister-in-law had died and the funeral was that day in St, Louis. He was a pallbearer. As the team minutes before game time was making plans to play without Sloan, he walked into the locker room. Then he played 44 minutes and led the Bulls to the win with 27 points and 14 rebounds.

Chet Walker would remark that day, "Sloan, you've got to be the most dedicated man in the world."

Jerry was, to his family, his players, his teams and especially to the sanctity of the game.

I recall a game when Ricky Davis was trying to get a triple double at the end of a blowout win over the Jazz and shot at his own basket to get a rebound. Sloan had one of his players try to tackle Davis afterward and then said, "I would've knocked him on his a**. You try to embarrass a team after a 20-point lead, you're g*d d*mn right I'd knock him down. They can put me in jail or whatever they want for saying that, but that's the way it is."

Though he was a fierce competitor, Karl Malone wasn't a fighter. Jerry was. There was a time when Kenyon Martin took a cheap shot at Malone, who didn't respond much. Sloan did, charging at Martin and being restrained. You always wanted Jerry Sloan on your side.

Jerry was the guy media most loved. He also was something of an ink stained wretch, an old shorthand for newspaper writers. Because after games when the coaches would wander off to the cocktail hours it was Jerry—also Rudy Tomjanovich, the pride of Hamtramck—who'd join the writers with pitchers. Not that the writers were more interesting. They just hung out with the factory workers. Jerry didn't suffer fools, and he wasn't about trying to fool you.

On road trips, he most enjoyed shopping for old tractors. Some guys collected phone numbers. Jerry collected old farm tractors, dozens stored back in his farm in McLeansboro. So revered was Sloan with those early Bulls they'd have the league allow the team to schedule regular season games in Evansville, where Sloan led the small college team to a pair of national titles after finding the U. of Illinois and Southern Illinois just too big. Jerry went home to be with his high school sweetheart, Bobbye, who died in 2004. And to pursue his life's fate, if not dream, working on an oil rig. But Bobbye got him back to basketball and Evansville.

Just ready to work. Jerry's dad died when he was four, so he had to run things. He ran in many ways, especially on the basketball court. There was a story about Sloan's mother, Jane, after Jerry's team lost a high school playoff game. Moms weren't in the stands then. There were chores. "How had you done?" she asked that next morning of Jerry. "Lost," he replied. "You must not have worked hard enough," she responded. It also was a Sloan family tradition.

Jerry Sloan was a two-time All-Star as a Bull and made All-Defensive First Team four times.

It burned at Jerry he never was able to win that NBA title, either as a player and then the two excruciating losses to the Bulls in the 1997 and 1998 Finals. He'd quietly lament how unfulfilling it was. Still, he stood proud and defiant. I loved when the Jazz got down to the Bulls in some of those series, especially after that 42-point loss in 1998. Sloan would smile and say he was excited because he was anxious to see how the players responded. You knew how Jerry would respond. He imbued that fire and desire in his teammates and players alike. The Jazz would get off the floor in that series to come within a Michael Jordan miracle minute of a seventh game and perhaps that elusive title.

Still, I recall Sloan saying after one of those playoff defeats, "A lot of guys will show their rings to you who didn't have anything to do with winning a championship. There's something to be said for coming back after you lose, for putting yourself on the line, for having the will to try it again and again, for putting every ounce of energy into achieving something after you've fallen short. That's the kind of guys we've always had here."

That's what Jerry Sloan brought to the game and it imbued in others the abilities and desires to raise above their levels, not unlike the demands and depredations we'd see sometimes with Michael Jordan.

Jerry never was the star player. He didn't score much, never averaging 20 points in his playing career. Though he may have invented the concept of being a two-way player. He was earnest at that opening training camp at North Central College in 1966 when he said he hoped to make the team. Nothing ever was givem; it shook be earned. "Some vital parts of the game aren't put in the proper perspective," Sloan once said during his playing years. "Only scorers are considered stars, but they miss the real fun. Playing the game at both ends."

Motta always said he built the Bulls around Sloan even with the scoring stars of Walker and Love. Motta explained about Sloan to inaugural Chicago Tribune Bulls writer Bob Logan: "He holds, he grabs, steps in their toes, anything to slow them down. Jerry goes a little crazy out there. He stands on defense with his arm out like a telephone pole and his hands are like hams. The big bony knee is stuck out to block the other way. Sloan just dares those monsters to win over him."

Sloan was admired, respected and feared around the NBA. The stars of the game detested playing against him because Jerry was just so humble. He wasn't celebrated like they were. But he believed he could compete with them.

"I take a lot of punishment and I don't complain," Sloan once said back then. "But I never step back no matter who tries to run over me."

Chicagoans get overlooked. But they don't step back.

Jerry coached the Bulls for two and half seasons from 1979 through 1982, replaced by his longtime friend and assistant Phil Johnson. They eventually left together for Salt Lake City, where Jerry became one of the winningest coaches in NBA history. He just brought Illinois and Chicago to the Wasatch.

On the WGN broadcasts in the late 60s from those games at the Amphitheater, announcer Don Harris used to extend Jerry's last name into a pair of syllables, "Sal-Own!" Perhaps the inspiration for a TV station's slogan? Jerry Sloan was Chicago's own.

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"Jerry Sloan is the Bulls history. He is Mr. Bull."

Iconic moments, unforgettable memories, and untold stories: watch as some of
    your favorite Bulls and staff members during the 90s share stories behind the Chicago Bulls’ Championship years.

HAVING A BUD WITH STACEY KING AND HORACE GRANT

Which Bulls championship was your favorite? We sat down Stacey King and Horace Grant together to share some stories from
the 90s era, presented by Budweiser

Watch as Toni Kukoc and Bill Wennington share stories from what it was like playing during the 90s Chicago Bulls
dynasty, presented by Budweiser USA.

Bulls photographer Bill Smith shares some behind-the-scenes stories behind his
    photos from 1991 and 1992.

Bulls photographer Bill Smith shares some behind-the-scenes stories behind his
    photos from 1996.

Bulls photographer Bill Smith shares some behind-the-scenes stories behind his
    photos from 1998.

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Inside Stories of The 90's Bulls

What: Inside the Dance, an exclusive one-hour show with exclusive interviews from players and personalities from the championship Bulls teams, diving into memories of the championship years and reactions to ESPN's hit documentary.When: Sunday, May 17 at 3:00 pm CT.Where: Chicago Bulls Facebook and YouTube pages, Bulls.com, Chicago Bulls app.Host: Jason Benetti.

Coby White &amp; Roy Williams talk about their reactions to The Last Dance and Williams shares stories of Michael Jordan.Stacey King, John Paxson &amp; Horace Grant relive the first three championships and discuss which era of 90s Bulls would win if they played.Toni Kukoc, Randy Brown &amp; Bill Wennington walk down memory lane of the final three championships and the end of the dynasty.Sam Smith talks about The Jordan Rules and addresses a famously misrepresented Michael Jordan quote.Arturas Karnisovas &amp; Marc Eversley talk about the impact the documentary has had on them and the future of the organization.

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Watch exclusive interviews from championship Bulls players and more on "Inside The Dance"

chidmoriarty

Episode 7 of "The Last Dance" documentary spent a few minutes detailing Scottie Pippen's refusal to play the final 1.8 seconds of a playoff game against the Knicks. While that moment could've broken the team, Sam Smith details why part of Pippen's brilliance was succeeding while being in the storm.

Chicago sports owns some of the most famous numbers in sports history. There's obviously 23, which has been celebrated again with "The Last Dance" documentary Sunday on ESPN. There's 34 for Walter Payton, 14 for Ernie Banks, 51 for Dick Butkus. And, of course, 1.8.

But that polarizing and unthinkable Faustian moment when it seemed that Pippen had sold the soul of the team also represented the soul of Scottie Pippen, and what actually enabled him to become perhaps the most unexpected great player in NBA history.

Look, this guy was the clubhouse attendant as a college freshman, hanging on through a work/study program to a nowhere school walk-on athletic scholarship. It did appear Pippen was going to be an early one-and-done. You know, one year of college and done and on the way to the factory.

It couldn't have been more Pippen Sunday in the documentary to say of the infamous 1.8 moment, "It was one of those incidents where I wish it never happened…"

Now wait for the sine qua non that is so Scottie Pippen…

"But if I had a chance to do it over again I probably wouldn't change it."

As unexpected as the laconic Pippen's snake-like reach on defense and gliding balletic offensive strides toward the basket are, so are his responses to adversity and accusation. But it's also perhaps the most vital armor Pippen has, the callous that serves as his shield against the barbs and bites of life.

It perhaps emerges from that impoverished rural life in Arkansas, the youngest of 12 in a two-room house, a father and a brother handicapped and in wheelchairs. Still, Pippen's trait is unique, in some respects like Michael Jordan who became his only family member taller than six feet. There was something special and unusual with Scottie Pippen, a peculiarity that perhaps isn't politically correct. Obstinate, unyielding, sure. They generally aren't the attributes scouts look for. Yet, it's probably as much as any which enabled Pippen to emerge as the second that helped make all those championships possible. And for Michael Jordan to reach the destiny that at least he expected for himself.

Scottie Pippen simply refused to be who everyone expected him to be. For better or worse. And it didn't much matter to him what anyone said or thought about that.

It's also a unique skill to exceed despite that.

One of my favorite stories about Pippen was one few would recall, just another night in a long season before the Bulls were winning championships. The team was in Boston and Pippen, as has often been explained in the documentary, was predictably unhappy with general manager Jerry Krause about his contract. Pippen was forever lagging behind in salary because he always insisted on the security of long term contracts. Which in the vast escalation of salaries in the 1990s become outdated quickly.

Pippen, as Steve Kerr eloquently described in the documentary, was something of the antidote to Jordan's passion and wrath. At least during Kerr's Bulls tenure. By then, Pippen, buttressed by his Dream Team success and MVP-caliber 1993-94 season, had settled into his Robin-to-Batman role of facilitator to Jordan's finisher.

Pippen was the one during the second threepeat who always knew who was on the court a long stretch without a shot. He'd tell that player to relax, that he'd get him a shot. He often was the calm in Jordan's storm. Yes, that Scottie Pippen.

Doug Collins relied excessively on Jordan at a time when the roster was weak and in transition. But Collins also fought in vain to get the ball out of Jordan's hands to start possessions. He wanted Jordan to go downcourt to lure the defense. But Jordan was so distrusting of the other players, he insisted on carrying the ball and doing it all himself. The teamwork breakthrough for Jordan wasn't just the triangle offense, but the trust in Pippen to start and run the offense.

The athletic Bulls were taking flight then, better than the aging Celtics, who still had Larry Bird and Kevin McHale. And it was yet another night of Scottie feeling unappreciated and maintaining his petulance. So to some innocuous question, Pippen launched his frustration at Krause and the Bulls. It was another of those endless diatribes of volatile charges and accusations. Not quite to the 1997 level of the refusal to wear a Bulls jersey again, but newspaper headline stuff.

So the team is back in Chicago the next morning and Pippen is wondering what's going on as he enters the north suburban Berto Center practice facility. There are a half dozen TV trucks and media swarming around waiting for the court to open for interviews. Pippen sees coach Phil Jackson while in his casual amble toward the locker room. Pippen's thinking Jordan must have done something again.

"Phil," Pippen asks, "what's everyone doing here? What's going on."

Jackson smiles his smirk. "Scottie," he says, "They're here for you." 

"Because of what you said last night," Jackson explains.

Not that Pippen was suffering early Alzheimer's. But Pippen has the most unusual ability to compartmentalize unacceptable trespass and transgression without letting it affect his abilities.

Pippen, as Phil Jackson acknowledged in his play calling, wasn't the best shooter, scorer or finisher. Though Pippen did work himself up to the fifth pick in the 1987 draft, his overall basketball skills didn't impress that many.

Scottie Pippen's legendary slam over Patrick Ewing in the 1994 playoffs.

After sitting out that last 1.8, bringing teammate Bill Cartwright to tears over his sit down strike, giving the impression of quitting on his team and it becoming a national uproar and debate, Pippen goes out the next day in Game 4 and carries the Bulls to victory. Pippen goes for 25 points, eight rebounds, six assists and two steals. In the Bulls 95-83 victory, Pippen was the only player on either team to score at least 20 points and the only one other than Horace Grant on the Bulls to score more than 10. Before an ambivalent home crowd that included many shouting he was a quitter, Pippen carried the Bulls back into the series that would eventually go seven games and include Pippen's Game 6 dunk stepping over Patrick Ewing.

That's also toughness. OK, maybe some pigheaded in there.

Pippen's kind of behavior should have snapped the bands of collectiveness of a team. Instead, it was an unusual quality of being able to look beyond and even ignore the distraction that symbolized those Bulls as much as Jordan's special abilities.

It wasn't just Pippen's ideal fit as the cog that meshed with Jordan's special wheel of athletic brilliance. But also Pippen's ability to not only ignore the whirling funnel clouds media mayhem around him, but to perform at a high level despite being in the eye of the storm. Jordan's white hot talent that lit the fires around the Bulls seemed also to be cooled by Pippen's somewhat oblivious calm in the storm.

To the outside world it was a tornado that disrupted the sport sphere. To them, it was just the temperature.

That's how you survive getting a concussion in the opening minute of Game 6 of the 1989 conference finals and then the migraine headache in Game 7 of the 1990 conference finals that you could see from the documentary even Jordan still wondered about.

And then to come back in the clinching game Game 4 in 1991 even after Dennis Rodman's vicious attack and play a game high in minutes and record 23 points, 10 assists and three steals with a game high 12 free throw attempts. It was Pippen absorbing the blows. Literal this time, as well.

Which is hardly to suggest that Pippen didn't behave in a questionable manner often.

That postponement of surgery in 1997 so he could miss the first half of that season was discouraging. Not that Pippen ever offered any contrition. And yet there he was in the Finals against the Jazz with 28 points and nine rebounds in Game 4 to help the Bulls to the basically insurmountable 3-1 lead. He played at least 45 minutes in both Games 4 and 5—averaging 42.4 minutes in the first five games—before his back gave out and Jordan carried the Bulls down the stretch in the Game 6 clincher.

The Last Dance is the Michael Jordan story. It's also the Phil Jackson story in the remarkable way the erudite coach was able to manage and motivate this remarkable group of athletes and individuals through one of the most successful sports decades in history. And the Scottie Pippen story of how one man's idiosyncratic inflexibility proved to be ballast not just for the Bulls sometimes listing ship, but his own unusual career. Like a snap of the fingers. Which takes about 1.8 seconds.

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The Last Dance takeaway: Scottie Pippen thrived in the storm

Take a trip down memory lane with Bulls photographer Bill Smith as he recalls capturing some of the best photographic moments in Bulls History

Bulls photographer Bill Smith shares some behind-the-scenes stories behind his photos from 1998.

Bulls photographer Bill Smith shares some behind-the-scenes stories behind his photos from 1996.

Bulls photographer Bill Smith shares some behind-the-scenes stories behind his photos from 1991 and 1992.

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Through the Lens with Bill Smith

Sam Smith reflects on the story of Dennis Rodman and how an outcast was accepted as a beloved figure in Chicago.

Being known as the Worm had nothing to do with behaving like an ugly, slimy, bothersome creature. It was because Dennis Rodman wiggled around so much when he was playing pinball machines.

This is the story, to me, that best defined and represents Rodman, whose turn comes Sunday with ESPN's continuing Last Dance tableau of the championship Bulls. Following a famously infamous and dysfunctional adolescence, the son of the eponymous Philander who supposedly fathered more than two dozen children with more than a dozen mothers, Dennis went to work cleaning cars in an Oldsmobile dealership and then as a janitor in the mammoth Dallas/Ft. Worth airport. It's why it was a 25-year-old Dennis finally being drafted in the second round by the Detroit Pistons in 1986.

Dennis' actual household wasn't very much, a mother who'd eventually toss him out and two athletically gifted sisters who played collegiate basketball. Dennis was awkward and unappreciated, cut from the football team, unable to dribble a basketball with any aptitude. He was clumsy and scrawny in poverty surrounded by relative successes. You know he was always hearing, "Can't you be like…." Dennis was barely 5-8 in high school with only an unexpected growth sport later sending him to his destiny.

The Detroit Pistons drafted Rodman in 1986.

It's fairly simple to envision someone forever seeking acceptance, security and attention. However he could get it. With an attention deficit disorder that apparently was so obvious I'd get unsolicited letters virtually every week when Dennis was with the Bulls from psychologists explaining the classic symptoms they recognized in his various outrages.

"I spent my whole childhood looking for an escape," he once said.

So Dennis got arrested while he was working at the airport.

Though I was something of a conservative scold toward Dennis when he was with the Bulls in my self assigned protection of the so called integrity of the game, Dennis asked me to write his biography when he was being inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2011. I walked with him the three blocks from the reception, social distancing before it was de rigueur, in certainly the most unusual entrance to the Symphony Hall ceremony. He was wearing a feather lined cowboy hat and large sunglasses before an adoring and cheering crowd lining the street. As Rodman wrote, as bad as he was, he was beloved. I believe people did see him for his innocence and naivety despite his numerous offenses.

That post high school airport offense was robbery. But there was a question of pressing charges. Could Dennis just return the stolen merchandise? So Dennis went around to his friends. He had given away all the watches he stole to his friends. He hadn't kept anything for himself.

It's also why during all those years with the Bulls, Dennis was closest with the ball boys and clubhouse workers, the people who rarely got a second glance and yearned for something better, something more. That's always who Dennis has been, just a kid straining for attention and acceptance, so anxious to please with that mischievous nature. Most of us are able to repress those urges into adulthood. Dennis eventually figured out with the inspiration of his mentor and girlfriend Madonna that to his delight this combination of insouciance and imp-like whimsey was both profitable and filled the void of love and attention.

Though it also shouldn't be confused with a lack of commitment despite the many times Dennis' hyperactivity distracted him. Dennis was a manic worker, strong and in condition at his wire 6-8. Despite a lack of academic interests, he was something of a basketball savant capable of absorbing the complex triangle offense principles with ease and analyzing the flight of the basketball so innately as to make him in one eight-year stretch the game's most prolific rebounder since Wilt Chamberlain.

Dennis was as competitive as Michael Jordan in his own way. Jordan yearned to a maniacal level for success and victory. Dennis did so perhaps more for acceptance.

Few people understood Dennis Rodman like Phil Jackson.

Dennis broke down almost immediately when he walked onto that stage in Springfield, grasping for presenter Phil Jackson for support as he would have for his previous guide, the late Pistons coach Chuck Daly. When the Pistons wanted to retire Dennis' jersey, he protested about attending without Chuck, the first father he believed he ever had. Chuck and the Pistons understood. They accepted Dennis for who he was. Just as the Bulls and Phil Jackson would years later. Who imagined it was Dennis the two bitter rivals would have in common.

So perhaps Dennis Rodman was the role model.

After all, what better rags-to-riches, success-from-rejection story is there than Rodman's rise from poverty and rejection to acclaim and fame? If not exactly the way you'd hope for all your children.

After all, Rodman has had his share of substance issues. Jackson even once participated in an intervention for Rodman. Which considering the issues in society at large also places Dennis in the unusual position of some normalcy.

Another delicious irony of the Bulls championship dynasty, especially in those last three seasons leading to the Last Dance, was that one of the guys in the Pistons' black and blue hat was the same guy with the rainbow hairstyle who was so enthusiastically and colorfully embraced during those last three championship years. Dennis was the guy who harassed Scottie Pippen to distraction to support Bill Laimbeer's cheap shot tactics and eventually viciously threw Pippen into the stands late in the Game 4 sweep in the 1991 conference finals. Little recalled about that famous Pistons walk off late in that concluding game was Michael Jordan's provocative media comments the previous day at practice, declaring the Pistons frauds and unworthy champions because of their tactics. Rodman became a co-instigator of the quick exit. And then a Chicago icon.

Dennis was just another rookie when he came to the Pistons in 1986, not playing much, about 15 minutes per game in the playoffs. And even a scorer. He averaged his most points per game within his first two years in the NBA. But his vulnerability was on display immediately. The path to his heart and trust was clear, if dangerous, and first Isiah Thomas and then Phil Jackson succumbed. When you commit to Dennis, he commits in return. That humiliating 1987 playoffs was when Thomas made the ill-fated inbounds pass Larry Bird stole. After the Pistons lost Game 7, Rodman blathered about Bird only being MVP because he was white. Thomas sitting nearby and sensing Rodman's error jumped in front of the bullet and agreed with Dennis. The NBA would eventually force Thomas to go to the Finals in LA and make a public apology. Even as he knew he was merely falling on the sword aimed at Rodman.

Similarly, when Rodman made his insulting comments about Mormons in 1997 and was fined heavily by the NBA, Jackson said: "To Dennis, a Mormon may just be a nickname for people from Utah. He may not even know it's a religious cult or sect or whatever it is."

Another guy to push Dennis out of the way and take the hit. It never was there for Dennis growing up, and it wasn't in San Antonio. Dennis could smile again. People cared.

I remember the fury among Chicago fans when Rodman head butted referee Ted Bernhardt during a game in the 1995-96 season. Rodman was suspended six games, which the Bulls and Chicago fans protested as inordinately severe. After all, wrestlers do stuff like that all the time. And then the Bulls merely continued on their way to win 72 games.

That perhaps more than anything was the strength of that second threepeat team. It had this remarkable ability despite the tumult of the games's greatest player, the game's most famous coach and the game's most outrageous player to march through the hail of distractions that would have leveled any other team. We're breaking you up! Sure, see if we care!

Rodman's atrocities may have been in some respects additional help rather than hindrance. Like Michael's legendary harsh demands and challenges during games and practices, there were Dennis' behavioral volatility that further helped anneal the group for the intense cauldron of the playoffs.

Condemnation of Mormons in Salt Lake City, kicking the sideline photographer, punching Joe Wolf in the groin, head butting Stacey King, then in Miami, suspended by the Bulls for profanities in a post game interview, sent home after missing practice after a night partying in Atlantic City. Rodman left the Bulls various times for Las Vegas getaways, even in the 1998 Finals.

"Dennis needs to dissipate energy sometimes," Jackson explained. "It builds up in him and he has to get rid of it. Whether it's on the dance floor or whatever. Sometimes Dennis plays a 40-minute game and then goes out and plays a 48-minute game afterward. He's got a perfect ability. I don't know what kind of biological clock he has in his system to do that kind of thing and bounce back and feel better."

Rodman was one of the best rebounders of all time.

Jackson once asked Steve Kerr and a few players to take Dennis to Atlantic City for a needed escape when the team was playing in Philadelphia. They only arrived back to Philadelphia the next morning straight to practice. It wasn't a very good practice.

That was part of the Dennis Rodman experience.

He was the ultimate underdog finally being, if not fully accepted, certainly appreciated by the big dogs.

Dennis didn't go out with Jordan or Scottie Pippen. He wasn't part of their famous workout Breakfast Club that last season with Jordan, Pippen and Ron Harper. Jordan would often say when he had to speak with Rodman he'd try to get him to focus like he did with his kids, stare into his eyes and reiterate, "Dennis, do you understand what I am saying!"

Dennis never really looked you in the eyes. When his dress wasn't spectacular, like when he wore a wedding gown walking Michigan Avenue to declare his intention to marry himself to promote a book, he often came to games wearing the logo shirt of a sanitation worker, security guard or truck driver. They were Dennis' people and he walked with them because they best knew his life on the inside despite what he showed on the outside.

Finally comfortable in the armor the Bulls' embrace provided, Rodman was an invaluable, irrepressible and irreplaceable part of those last three championships. Not that it was expected. General Manager Jerry Krause detested Rodman's behavior and was opposed to his signing. So was Phil Jackson, who was lobbying for Derrick Coleman because of his more versatile offensive game. But credit Krause for that buck stopping there. Krause approved, Jackson, Jordan and Pippen agreed to be patient, and Dennis was given the space he needed.

Suspensions and injuries cost Rodman 45 games those first two Bulls seasons. During the Last Dance, Dennis' attendance was nearly perfect while Pippen stewed. Dennis seemed to lose interest when Pippen returned in January, though likely he was more hurt as Michael's embrace returned to Scottie. But Dennis didn't disappoint when needed on the court, his amazing defense against Shaquille O'Neal and Karl Malone in the playoffs crucial to the Bulls success in that era. Rodman became such a skilled defender, he was named NBA Defensive Player of the Year in Detroit despite still coming off the bench.

Rodman's defensive versatility enabled Jackson to be the first to successfully employ that ultimate five-player switching lineup that the Golden State Warriors popularized in recent years. Rodman averaged more than 15 rebounds per game his three Bulls seasons and more than 11 in the playoffs. In the 1996 Finals even though Jordan was MVP, Seattle coach George Karl said Rodman won two games virtually on his own.

Dennis has had his problems since leaving basketball with arrests, reality shows and the fantasy of international diplomacy in North Korea. "There's one thing people don't understand," he once said, "I like my character." Dennis has been in many ways pierced and tattooed in a multicolored life. That also has wormed its way into so many hearts.

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The Last Dance isn't complete without the colorful story of Dennis Rodman

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