When Nothing Else Matters (eBook)

Michael Jordan's Last Comeback

Michael Leahy (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2004 | 1. Auflage
448 Seiten
Simon & Schuster (Verlag)
9780743276481 (ISBN)

Infos

As one of the greatest, most celebrated athletes in history, Michael Jordan conquered professional basketball as no one had before. Powered by a potent mix of charisma, nearly superhuman abilities, and a ferocious need to dominate the game, he won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls and captured every basketball award and accolade conceivable before retiring and taking a top executive post with the Washington Wizards. But retirement didn't suit the man who was once king, and at the advanced age of thirty-eight Michael Jordan set out to reclaim the court that had been his dominion.
When Nothing Else Matters is the definitive account of Jordan's equally spectacular and disastrous return to basketball. Having gone on the road to chronicle Jordan's final two seasons, award-winning Washington Post writer Michael Leahy draws a riveting portrait of a deeply complex man waylaid by his impulses and impatience, frequently hampered by injuries, assaulted by younger players eager to usurp his throne, and ultimately done in by his presumption. Encouraged for two decades by his sport's magnates to believe that he had no limits or superiors, Jordan could not see his influence and power fading as his Wizards days ticked down and his team's losses and dissension grew. For teammates and outsiders alike, the star emerged as a relentlessly driven, at times unapproachable personality. Leahy reveals the striking contrast between Jordan's public image and the man who couldn't stand not 'bein' it.'
Hell-bent on transforming the mediocre Wizards into championship contenders, Jordan controlled every facet of his new team, dispensing orders behind the scenes to coaches and players. As his anger and bitterness over Washington's on-court setbacks became increasingly public, his teammates' resentment of him stoked already burgeoning tensions between Jordan and the Wizards' top brass. Leahy unmasks the myths and unravels the deeper lessons behind the highs and lows of the two seasons, illuminating the excruciating reality Jordan was forced to accept after the Wizards' failed playoff bid in his final season. When Nothing Else Matters is about nothing less than a man struggling to come to grips with the end of a career, and the uncertainty of his life ahead.

---

As one of the greatest, most celebrated athletes in history, Michael Jordan conquered professional basketball as no one had before. Powered by a potent mix of charisma, nearly superhuman abilities, and a ferocious need to dominate the game, he won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls and captured every basketball award and accolade conceivable before retiring and taking a top executive post with the Washington Wizards. But retirement didn't suit the man who was once king, and at the advanced age of thirty-eight Michael Jordan set out to reclaim the court that had been his dominion. When Nothing Else Matters is the definitive account of Jordan's equally spectacular and disastrous return to basketball. Having gone on the road to chronicle Jordan's final two seasons, award-winning Washington Post writer Michael Leahy draws a riveting portrait of a deeply complex man waylaid by his impulses and impatience, frequently hampered by injuries, assaulted by younger players eager to usurp his throne, and ultimately done in by his presumption. Encouraged for two decades by his sport's magnates to believe that he had no limits or superiors, Jordan could not see his influence and power fading as his Wizards days ticked down and his team's losses and dissension grew. For teammates and outsiders alike, the star emerged as a relentlessly driven, at times unapproachable personality. Leahy reveals the striking contrast between Jordan's public image and the man who couldn't stand not "e;bein' it."e; Hell-bent on transforming the mediocre Wizards into championship contenders, Jordan controlled every facet of his new team, dispensing orders behind the scenes to coaches and players. As his anger and bitterness over Washington's on-court setbacks became increasingly public, his teammates' resentment of him stoked already burgeoning tensions between Jordan and the Wizards' top brass. Leahy unmasks the myths and unravels the deeper lessons behind the highs and lows of the two seasons, illuminating the excruciating reality Jordan was forced to accept after the Wizards' failed playoff bid in his final season. When Nothing Else Matters is about nothing less than a man struggling to come to grips with the end of a career, and the uncertainty of his life ahead.

Textauszug

Introduction It began derailing after season one. His world was FUBAR by then. A promising young teammate, Richard Hamilton, had dared to stand up to him in a mutual searing of egos, and found himself traded. The mounting dissension on the team called to mind a word that Michael Jordan and some of his old Chicago Bulls associates exchanged during the Bulls' glory days to describe something or someone gone bad indefinitely. It was a code word, an acronym. FUBAR: Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. By his last season, the Washington Wizards were hopelessly FUBAR. Michael Jordan's three years in Washington -- about a year and nine months as an official executive and two seasons as a player -- were troubled from the start. Before his comeback began, The Washington Post dispatched me to watch him for an entire season, and much of a second. I valued the experience, even the awfulness, which I hesitate admitting because I realize it sounds peculiar and a little perverse. But if you wanted to know what forces -- money and a sense of entitlement, most of all -- coarsened professional sports in the last gasps of the 20th century and the beginning of the new millennium, it behooved you to have been witness to the Wizards and the Michael Show. Not everybody around me thought so. The Wizards coach, Doug Collins, called me a 'stalker.' Someone at my own paper, a sportswriter friend of Jordan, let it be known that he wouldn't talk to me, wouldn't read me. The coolest, savviest person was always Michael Jordan. Looking for a solution to the problem my presence caused, unable to banish me like an irksome teammate, he quietly turned toward his people for a solution, leading one of his publicists to advise me that I would perhaps enjoy more cooperation from Jordan if I could assure her that I would not be writing a book. Besides orchestrating deals and advancing fables, the protectors of a sports god have only a few essential duties: to shelter Him from taxable income and any unseemly truths, not always in that order -- and to keep people like me away. Seduction is part of the game, and writers are often easy prey, anxious to have the cachet that accompanies being regarded as a Jordan favorite. 'He's Jordan's guy,' someone would say of a journalist who made it known he was a Jordan friend. You never heard such an admission, or description, outside of sports journalism. No one ever refers to a top political columnist in this country as, say, 'Bush's guy' or 'Clinton's guy' or 'Kerry's guy,' because for a political columnist to be regarded as anybody's guy would be the ultimate insult. By contrast, the sports industry is filled with athletes' buddies and mouthpieces. Michael Jordan offered them the celebrity's form of friendship: small morsels of self-serving information in exchange for the tacit understanding that they'd never write or say anything critical about him. So you didn't read much, say, about how he called a teammate a 'faggot.' Understand this: Truth, or complete truth, is a deferred commodity in sports when it comes to idols. It isn't only some of the media that stay quiet. No one is more responsible for hiding truths than a team's management and ownership. The big truths are placed in a lockbox as long as the god makes the franchise a lot of money. And Michael Jordan made a lot of money for a lot of people. But ownership at least saw a tangible benefit. For the media, the rewards were scant. Jordan sometimes would tell his media favorites about a teammate or club official he'd lost confidence in, or a trade he wanted to see happen. In special cases, he'd invite them to parties. He wouldn't give them much, but they'd be grateful...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.11.2004
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sport ► Ballsport ► Basketball
• ISBN-13: 9780743276481 / 9780743276481