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.