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Sam Smith: A lot of my colleagues, the media used it as a way to take shots at him, especially in the New York Times. I thought they used it a lot to say, well, this is his political philosophy, unlike these players today. And it was a lot different when LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Chris Paul were making these stands about, and it was fine. I'm glad they were doing it. But doing it in 2010 was a lot different than saying something like that in 1988 or something. That got sort of smoothed over, and I always felt Michael was made a victim, and that I wanted to clear that up, that that was a joke that had nothing to do with political philosophy, and that was a classic out-of-context gotcha. We don't care what he meant, but it's a good story, so we're going to use it as a good story.
Sam Smith: I always felt bad about the way the media interpreted the 'Republicans buy sneakers, too' comment by Michael Jordan. Michael would sit and talk for hours on end before every game. He loved the give and take. And so me having a political background, after a couple of hours of talking basketball, you end up bringing up some other stuff.
Phil kind of made the joke that the '70s Knicks used to get together, and that 'I don't think there's going to be many get-togethers with the '96 Bulls.' He was sort of joking about it, that there are not going to be many reunions after all the things that have been said. Scottie Pippen called Phil a racist. Scottie has been an angry guy. He's been angry at everybody and doesn't have a relationship with the Bulls anymore. I was pretty close to him; we were going to write a book together, I still got the contract for it, but we finally didn't do it. He doesn't talk to me anymore either.
Sam Smith: Phil Jackson was very sympathetic toward him, despite whatever things he said about him. We talked about that in the book. He said, 'I feel like Scottie Pippen has had bad advice.' And the touching thing, though, was that when I asked him about how Michael reacted, he said Michael Jordan was really hurt by it, and not angry. He regrets losing this relationship.
Sam Smith: The Bulls made offers: Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, Eddie Jones, Grant Hill, Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter, literally every single one. And they ran away, fast. They just ran away from playing after Michael Jordan. (…) While all these other great players ran away from the Jordan shadow, Kobe Bryant ran to it. He was like the firefighter running to the fire. He was the policeman who ran toward the 9/11 terrorist attack. Everybody else was running away for safety, and he was running toward it.
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Sam Smith: Phil Jackson was literally at Kobe Bryant’s house just days before the horrible accident; he had gone down to Orange County and spent some time with him, and they were literally talking about Kobe traveling on helicopters back and forth all the time.
James Dolan thought the media would run Phil Jackson out of town. But it was Carmelo Anthony. In a book scheduled for release Nov. 4, Jackson delves into his tenuous relationship with Melo, how the Knicks contributed to the end of his engagement to Jeanie Buss, a previously unknown desire to hire Virginia coach Tony Bennett and his conversations with Dolan before a “mutual decision to part ways” in 2017. “Dolan said to me, ‘Are you going to get run out of town by the media?’ I said, ‘I know who the media is; that doesn’t affect me,’ ” Jackson said in the Carmelo chapter of his book, “Masters of the Game,” a conversational read on the 75 greatest players through the lens of the legendary coach and Hall of Fame scribe Sam Smith. “But Dolan felt it was too much. He said, ‘I don’t want you to go through it. I know what it’s like to deal with these people.’ I said, ‘Unfortunately my relationship with Carmelo is kind of busted, and if he’s going to be here, it’s probably best that I go.’ ”
When Sam Smith died in his modest home on the east side of Indianapolis, he died a man who not long before had swallowed his pride and made a phone call to ask for gas money. He died a man who had to make a call to ask for help with funeral expenses for his daughter. He died a man who was an American Basketball Association player, a pioneer who blazed the trail for what the NBA is today. But basketball ended for Smith. After winning an ABA championship with the Utah Stars, he got a job as a security supervisor at the Ford assembly plant in Indianapolis. Years passed. Times got harder. More years passed.
As Smith's 50th reunion for his Kentucky Wesleyan NCAA Division II championship approached five years ago, he called the Dropping Dimes Foundation, which helps struggling ABA players and their families. Smith didn't have the money to get to his reunion, he told Dropping Dimes CEO and founder Scott Tarter. He needed a loan, and insisted it be a loan, for $250. Dropping Dimes gave him the money and told him it was a gift, not a loan.
Two years later, Smith had to make another call. His daughter had died a single mother, leaving her 5-year-old son with autism for Smith and his wife, Helen, to raise. "He called me up in tears," said Tarter. Smith didn't have the money to pay for his daughter's funeral. Dropping Dimes helped and Smith waited some more, hoping. The pension from the NBA never came.
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“He actually had this curious ambivalence with Jordan,” said Sam Smith, who covered Pippen’s entire Bulls career and wrote the classic book, “The Jordan Rules.” “He wanted to be accepted and part of Jordan’s orbit, and I think that stemmed from, as a lot of it does, from where it came from. … He always really hungered for it, but Michael, being the shark he was, he would recognize that. He was so aware of people wanting to do that. “And then he would belittle Pippen when he was trying to be considered an equal, and then Pippen would go sort of crawling back to Horace Grant and the guys because he wasn’t accepted like he wanted to be.”
Sam Smith: Jordan has never said a word to me about “The Jordan Rules.” Never once, in thirty years. At the end of the interview, I said, “Hey, tell me something. Did you have to ask Michael permission to talk to me?” And the guy kind of stammered a little bit. And he said, “Well, we actually did ask him if it was O.K.” And I said, “Well, what’d he say?” He said, “I don’t give a fuck who you talk to.” The way I understood it is, he didn’t say whether they could or could not. They weren’t sure whether they should.
Sam Smith: I thought the documentary was more “based on a true story.” I think there was a little bit of drama put into it. It was Michael’s story. It wasn’t a journalistic documentary, per se. And it shouldn’t be. He never told his story before. People never heard it from his standpoint, and that’s what it was.
Sam Smith: I had extraordinary access that doesn’t exist anymore, in any form. You can develop relationships. Media guys still develop the relationships. But these men and women who do that now have to produce something, like, every two hours. I would make other calls. I would check on things. I would hang out with players. The Bulls practiced in a public health club. I joined it as a member. So when they would lift weights after practice, I would be next to them. I wouldn’t lift weights, but I would be sitting with them. Now everything is privacy. The locker room was just open. For a 7 p.m. game, Jordan would come at, like, 3 p.m. or something, so I’d get there and just talk with him for three hours. Now you’ve got ten minutes with guys, if that. LeBron is celebrated for being one of the few in the whole league who comes out before the game and gives the media five minutes. Jordan gave everybody three hours.