Name: The Jordan Rules
ISBN: 9780671744915

The Jordan Rules

The most gifted athlete ever to play the game, Michael Jordan rose to heights no basketball player had ever reached before. What drove Michael Jordan? The pursuit of team success...or of his own personal glory? The pursuit of excellence...or of his next multimillion-dollar endorsement? The flight of the man they call Air Jordan had been rocked by controversy. In The Jordan Rules, which chronicles the Chicago Bulls' first championship season, Sam Smith takes the #1 Bull by the horns to reveal the team behind the man...and the man behind the Madison Avenue smile. Here is the inside game, both on and off the court, including: Jordan's power struggles with management, from verbal attacks on the general manager to tantrums against his coach Behind-the-scenes feuds, as Jordan punches a teammate in practice and refuses to pass the ball in the crucial minutes of big games The players who competed with His Airness for Air Time -- Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Bill Cartwright -- telling their sides of the story A penetrating look at coach Phil Jackson, the former flower child who blossomed into one of the NBA's top motivators and who finally found a way to coax "Michael and the Jordanaires" to the their first title A provocative eyewitness account, The Jordan Rules delivers all the nonstop excitement, tension, and thrills of a championship season -- and an intense, fascinating portrait of the incomparable Michael Jordan.

What Hacker News says

neeeeeesDec 2019

If you haven’t read it already, I highly suggest Sam Smith’s “The Jordan Rules”. It’s really fascinating to see the tension that’s present behind-the-scenes even on a team that is super successful on the court.

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klenwellDec 2018

Three entertaining reads that also turned out to hide interesting little studies in team management:

- Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (the breakout memoir that made his career)

- Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam (about the 79-80 Portland Trailblazers)

- The Jordan Rules by Sam Smith (about the Bulls first NBA championship with Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson)

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33313.Kitchen_Confidenti...

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/75406.The_Breaks_of_the_...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/246468.The_Jordan_Rules

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brisanceNov 2011

Anyone else read Sam Smith's "The Jordan Rules"? Jordan is without doubt one of the greatest, if not the greatest, basketball player the world has seen. He is also known to be egotistical, as many competitive athletes/alpha males are (it's probably the testosterone).

Like Steve Jobs, Jordan would not suffer fools gladly, would "bully" team-mates, had laser-focus etc. Had a good wingman in the form of Pippen (Tim Cook). Yet one cannot fault him for his many accomplishments. He rose to the occasion time and again (how many times have we seen him take the buzzer-beater?), and had an admirable work ethic.

As the saying goes "haters gonna hate". The fact is that Jordan, Steve Jobs, and many other people changed their respective industries and beyond. Jordan not only changed professional sports, but also sports management and sports equipment marketing. Steve Jobs' achievements probably need no introduction.

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klenwellJan 2019

That's a great example. I think basketball, especially the NBA, is an interesting correlate for thinking about team dynamics, especially programming teams which in my experience have often been about the size of a basketball team.

I read The Jordan Rules last year about the Bulls' first championship season and before the season begins, Phil Jackson says something like, "If Michael Jordan wins the scoring title again this year, we won't win a championship." This was after they had reached Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals the year before.

If I remember correctly, Jordan did win the scoring title that year as well as his first championship ring. But even in a sport like basketball where there are stats and increasingly sophisticated metrics and data analysis, I find it most interesting reading about the less visible contributors and the crucial roles they often play. (Breaks of the Game, the book that inspired The Jordan Rules, I think does even a better job of getting into this aspect of the team dynamic.)

This is also related to the big idea popularized by Moneyball. But where Moneyball struck me as more relevant to hiring, reading about the NBA has led me to think about how teams perform together more carefully where the metrics as you say are often trickier.

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