Mj's Court

There are rituals that shape the life of Michael Jordan. At the end of the 1998 NBA playoffs, as he has for the last 13 years, he went to the North Carolina basketball camp run by his old school friend, Fred Whitfield. This is Jordan's country, a morning's drive from the town of Wilmington where he grew up, or the cemetery where his father, James Jordan, was buried in 1993, the victim of a roadside homicide. Here, Jordan falls back into a tight group of old friends, black men he has known for most of his 35 years--a ""sacred inner circle,'' says Whitfield, ""that we don't let many people in.'' Jordan calls them all by their initials. They call him MJ, Jumper or Black Cat. He's the last to leave a card game, the scariest driver, the worst fiend for honey buns and grape soda. The night before the camp's celebrity tournament, Jordan did his usual stand-up comedy routine at a local pasta joint, trading corny jokes with Fred Glover, an insurance adjuster and charter member of the group.

But this year, the vibe was different. His friends had noticed over the season that he seemed battered, not enjoying himself. In North Carolina, too, his bearing was changed. Michael was more at peace. ""He used to play R&B on the radio,'' says Whitfield. ""Now he's mellowing out with jazz.'' Before he retired briefly in 1994 to play minor-league baseball, he'd called each of the friends to sound them out. This time, there was no need for discussion. His friends understood.

When he finally announced his retirement last week, Jordan wanted simply to send out a press release: Michael Jordan, the greatest player ever to play the game, was hanging it up. There would be no public show of sentiment, no golden farewell tour. He was talked out of it. Jordan told Ron Harper and Scottie Pippen, the Bulls part of his inner circle, privately last Monday, then held a farewell dinner for 14 friends at a Chicago restaurant--no wives, just the guys. Like most Jordan affairs, it ended, late, in cigars and cards. ""Michael's motivation was always to win one more [championship] ring than Magic [Johnson],'' Harper told NEWSWEEK. ""Magic had five, so when Michael got his six, we all knew that was it.'' Then last Wednesday, he declared his intentions to the world. ""I thought of saying just two words,'' he said: ""'I'm gone'.''

After the thrills of Jordan's basketball career, the press conference was anticlimactic. Flanked by his stoic wife, Juanita, and his corporate bedfellows--NBA Commissioner David Stern, who had just bested the players union in a bitter labor dispute, and Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, whose yoke Jordan has long openly resented--Jordan referred to himself in the third person, running through stock platitudes. He'd done all he could in the game; there were no challenges left. He'd become as ubiquitous as the products he endorses, appearing not just on cereal boxes and TV screens, but in an average of 100 newspaper and magazine articles a day. About Michael Jordan, the epochal athlete and global icon, there was little left to say.

But the manufactured images of Jordan, as nearby as our next Happy Meal, obscure as much as they reveal. Beyond the smiling pitchman and ferociously competitive athlete, there is much to Jordan that we rarely see--a Southern old soul with a quick wit, sharp temper and generous streak. Though he declined to be interviewed for this article, he allowed his otherwise protective friends to help draw an intimate portrait of the other Michael Jordan, the one only they know.

Some facts about Michael Jordan: His favorite movie is ""Friday,'' the bawdy South-Central comedy co-written by Ice Cube. A former geography major, he loves to quiz friends on state capitals. ""He gets a kick out of knowing something that you don't, which is often,'' says one. He curses like Redd Foxx. He holds an annual party for a dozen or so sponsors at a restaurant in Santa Barbara, Calif., where he takes pride in tending bar. ""That boy don't know how to make drinks,'' says North Carolina friend Adolph Shiver with a laugh. ""He just be throwing s--- together.'' Talking about cars or clothes with friends, he'll chime in, ""That's a lot of money,'' just as if he didn't earn $80 million last year. He makes young teammates like Randy Brown and Dickey Simpkins ask his permission before they wear their Air Jordan sneakers.

When he announced his retirement, Jordan said he looked forward to spending more time with his family, especially with his three children: Jeffrey, 10; Marcus, 8, and Jasmine, 6. If Jordan has one regret about his life, says comedian and actor Damon Wayans, a friend since 1996, ""it's that he's missed a lot of his children's growth.'' Because Jordan spends so much time on the road, his marriage of nine years has been the subject of some speculation. ""They've had the problems and the ups and downs that any [couple] would have,'' says a friend. ""Now that [the travel] part of his life is over, family can be first.''

But Jordan has always moved most comfortably in the company of men, specifically among his small inner circle. This is a preference, like the habit of sticking out his tongue, that he inherited from his father. In Michael's childhood, one of James Jordan's harsher sentences for his youngest son was ""get in the house with the women.'' Now, Jordan would rather be with the guys. Drawn together over the years--some from the NBA, many from his North Carolina youth--this close-knit group of almost exclusively African-American men is his lifeline back to earth. They are proudly reticent, more comfortable playing the dozens than sharing their feelings. ""I think Michael has stayed the same all these years because he's kept the same people around him,'' says Whitfield, who now works in marketing at Nike. They are mostly older, mostly rural Southerners, closer in spirit to past generations than to the hip-hop kids rising up in the league. Some, like security guard Gus Lett, 61, and Nike rep Howard White, 45, have played the role of father figure, especially since James's death. ""Michael has the Southern reverence for elders,'' says Whitfield, who is five years older than Jordan. ""Michael feels comfortable around those type of men who don't necessarily have an education from a school but a master's in life.''

To spend any hang time with Jordan is to feel first in his attentions. He has a Clintonesque ability to make everyone in a room feel uniquely favored. He makes eye contact immediately, and remembers every name. He doesn't brood. After victory or defeat, friends say, in social situations he is always upbeat and considerate, asking after their welfare and dispensing favors with the confidence of someone who knows he has the Midas touch. ""He doesn't worry about giving because he knows he'll get it back,'' says Fred Kearns, a funeral director and member of the North Carolina crew.

Cris Carter, the Minnesota Vikings football star, has been a friend for 12 years. Carter, who is an ordained minister, was holding chapel one Sunday in Miami when the Bulls were in town to play the Heat. ""I'd seen [Jordan] the day before and invited him to chapel,'' says Carter. ""All the people around him were saying, "Michael has a schedule and he won't change it to come to chapel'.'' Sunday morning, however, Jordan was at the church, walking around looking lost. ""He sees me and says, "Where's the chapel, man, let's get started.' He's that type of guy. If you ask him to do something, he will.''

But if anyone crosses him, friends say, watch out. ""When you get on Michael's bad side, it's not a good place to be,'' says Kearns. There's no coming back. ""If you burn him,'' says another friend, ""it's over.'' For all Jordan's smiling commercials, players know that he is not above meeting them out in the parking lot after the game. The friend adds, ""Mike might not be from the street but Mike will step to you hard if you mess with him.'' During the NBA's 1994 labor troubles, when Jordan and others tried to overthrow the union head, teammate Steve Kerr voiced an opposing view. In practice shortly thereafter, Jordan accidentally blackened Kerr's eye. (Kerr could not be reached for comment.)

With his friends, Jordan plays golf, pickup hoops, any game of cards--cutthroat competition, even when the stakes are almost comically low. He won't let you leave a game of bid whist, says Harper, until he's taken your money. In Chicago, Pippen and Harper worked out at Jordan's house every morning--they were the Breakfast Club--until Jordan had the gym torn out last month. ""Now I've gotta see if I can borrow [Jordan's] cook,'' says Harper. When Pippen came to the team in 1987, Jordan held him at arm's length. They've since developed a big brother/little brother relationship, competitive and at the same time mutually dependent. ""He and Scottie say things to each other that are sort of cruel--and it's mostly Michael doing that,'' says a teammate. ""But they understand each other well.'' Pippen has been ambivalent about life in Jordan's shadow. ""It would be nice to win a championship without Michael and to be MVP one year,'' he says.

Jordan can be sternly affectionate. Even after the most rancorous game, opponents lined up to ask him to sign their sneakers, and he always complied. But he is also imperious, forcing the same discipline on them that he does on himself. When two top players on another team were in an ugly and semipublic feud over a woman a few years back, Jordan commanded them to quash it. His macho bluster can have a brutal edge. After the championship game in last season's Finals, says Wayans, Jordan stepped up to reserve player Joe Klein, who was weeping victory tears. ""Why are you crying?'' Jordan asked Klein. ""I'm the one who went out and won it for you.''

Each Christmas after a good year, Jordan makes replicas of his latest championship ring for the North Carolina crew. ""I have mine in a safety-deposit box because they're so valuable,'' says Glover. This group is particularly tight, grown more insular since the death of James Jordan. ""He doesn't talk about his father much, he likes to keep that private,'' says Kearns. ""After his father's death, he stayed in more, and got extra security. Before that, he would go out places without worry.'' The friends flew to games on the East Coast and put the rest of their lives on hold during the playoffs, spending the nights before games around Jordan's card table. When they can't travel with him, Jordan unfailingly makes time to call. They tremble through harrowingly fast drives in Jordan's Porsche; they watch a ton of TV--simple pleasures. One afternoon, says Glover, they all wanted to play football. Michael offered to run to the store to get a ball. ""We were like, "You're going to Wal-Mart to buy a football--have you forgotten who you are?' '' For all he has accomplished, they insist, he is still down-home. ""Michael,'' says Wayans, ""is really just a country bumpkin who's transformed himself into everyman and superman at the same time.''

In assessing Jordan's universal appeal, sports agent Leigh Steinberg contends that ""Jordan totally transcended race. He was bigger than the race question.'' By this line of thought, people don't see Jordan as black, they see him as famous and successful. Among his friends, though, the real Jordan is nothing if not culturally specific. The music is smooth jazz or old Chi-Lites, the language a robust brew of Deep Southern proverbs and slang. The grandson of a sharecropper, he is not seduced by his success. He has several close white friends, including his longtime driver, George Koehler, and college roommate Robert (Buzz) Peterson, and navigates corporate halls like a true master of the universe. But he is more in the white world than of it--still seething, for example, over perceived slights from Bulls management. ""Michael knows he's a black man in America,'' says one friend. ""He's been able to cross over to mainstream America, and they may have forgotten, but he hasn't. He's a Southern black man just like his father before him. He's the spitting image of James Jordan, who was a proud man, and Michael's proud of that.''

When he first came to the NBA, Jordan set his sights by Julius Erving, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. But recently he began to place himself in the context of a different group of athletes, one distinguished for their social activism, as well as their game. Long criticized for being apolitical, not rocking the sponsorship boat, Jordan wrote in ESPN magazine last spring, ""I really think that when I'm done I will take a bigger stand in social and political things. I look at someone like Jackie Robinson, and I see that he became a lot more outspoken after he left the game. Same with Hank Aaron. Because you have more time and energy to devote to causes.''

Above his left breast, not visible when he's in uniform, Jordan has a horseshoe-shaped brand of the Greek omega, for the fraternity Omega Psi Phi. The black frat, known as the Q-Dogs, is home to such notables as Jesse Jackson, Bill Cosby and Shaquille O'Neal. ""We get together as much as his schedule allows and talk about what can be done in the community,'' says Jordan's main Nike rep, Erin Patton, who is also an Omega. ""Michael will probably become more active in the coming days.''

Beyond this, look for Jordan to have quite a rich retirement. There's golf and his passion for gambling, which so far caused the one stain on his otherwise clean image. Though some critics have suggested he has a gambling problem, especially after reporters sighted him in an Atlantic City casino the night before a playoff game, his friends shrug it off as a release from the pressures of being Michael Jordan. ""It takes his mind off the shoes, the batteries, the forks, the knives and whatever else he's selling,'' Wayans says, laughing.

His endorsement contracts are all long term and will continue to occupy much of his time. As a pitchman, Jordan has always been particularly hands-on. ""If there's a story in The Buffalo News about retailers complaining about lack of product or whatever,'' says an executive at one of Jordan's sponsors, ""he'll see it and ask what we're doing about it.'' For Nike, he continues to develop his complete line of (Swoosh-free) sportswear, Brand Jordan. An inveterate clotheshorse--his elegant suits are custom made by a Chicago tailor--Jordan spends hours poring over fabrics and designs, as well as marketing campaigns. As he told NEWSWEEK when launching the line in the fall of 1997, ""It's not rare for my Nike [design team] to come out to my house and just kick it with me for a while. Then they look at my cars and go into my closet just to get a better definition of who I am.'' With Fred Whitfield's brother, he plans to launch a music label later this year, and he's talking about making another film--with live costars this time, not cartoons.

He swears that the roundball court is behind him for certain this time, or ""99.5 percent.'' The day after his retirement press conference, he led a contingent to the Bob Hope golf tournament in Palm Springs. Mostly, the Black Cat will continue to do what he's always done, to move in a select, very close circle of men. And he will remain the king of his court.

PHOTO (COLOR): Michael Jordan

PHOTOS (COLOR): PUBLIC MICHAEL, PRIVATE MICHAEL: We've seen him golfing; his wife, Juanita, joined him at his farewell (above). He's been spotted at Cubs games with son Jeffrey, or in one of his restaurants. But few would recognize his frat greeting to pal Adolph Shiver.

PHOTO (COLOR): HE HAD GAME. . .: INDOMITABLE WILL: Stricken with the flu, he still scored 38 points to win this 1997 Finals game. After, Scottie Pippen helped him off the court.

PHOTO (COLOR): SHOWMANSHIP: Ever since his rookie Slam Dunk contest, he gave fans--and teammates--an adrenaline jolt with his gasp-inducing moves

PHOTO (COLOR): TEAM PLAY: He knew that being the best one-on-one player also made him the greatest decoy, drawing defenders to him and dishing off

PHOTO (COLOR): ATHLETICISM: Fundamentals and practice made him more than just another jumper--but being faster, quicker and stronger didn't hurt

PHOTO (COLOR): LIVING LARGE: Jordan's Chicago home had a gym where he worked out with Pippen and Harper--until he tore it out a few weeks ago

PHOTO (COLOR): DOING GOOD: A Michael Jordan Foundation of the Carolinas event, with the founder and mom

MIKE'S MEN: THE INNER CIRCLE They call him MJ or Black Cat. Many of Jordan's most-trusted friends go back with him to his youth and college days in North Carolina. These are his closest pals:

RON HARPER, 35: A Bulls teammate the last four years, he played in the bid whist and poker games on the NBA road. At home he and Scottie Pippen worked out at MJ's house, forming what they called the Breakfast Club.

AHMAD RASHAD, 49: He's been an older brother and confidant since Jordan's early NBA seasons. Because Rashad covers him for NBC, they're guarded about the relationship.

FRED GLOVER, 38: Met MJ at a Campbell College hoops camp in the summer of '81; now lives in Fayetteville, N.C. When Jordan comes back to North Carolina, Glover feeds him his down-home favorites: grape soda and honey buns.

DAMON WAYANS, 39: They bonded when Jordan moved in next door to him in L.A. while filming ""Space Jam.'' The two share a love of movies and comedy. Now that Jordan has time, Wayans says, he should try stand-up.

GUS LETT, 61: A former security guard at Chicago Stadium, he looked out for the young Bull after MJ broke his foot in his second season. He now works for Jordan; after Michael's dad died, Lett became a surrogate.

FRED WHITFIELD, 40: Like Glover, he's been a friend since Michael was a teen. Jordan helped him get a job at Nike; he's a marketing director.

ADOLPH SHIVER, 35: They met in 10th grade, played college ball together and pledged Omega Psi Phi together, taking the frat line names Batman (Shiver) and Robin (Jordan). A summer golf buddy, he's a concert and party promoter in Charlotte.