The Last Dance

Are you surprised the team has stayed together

and the chemistry has been good

with the backstabbing between you and coach and everything else?

First of all, there's no backstabbing going on here, okay?

Okay? You understand me when I say that?

There's no backstabbing going on here, okay?

Second, no, I'm not surprised at all.

And I'm amazed that you would even make a statement like that,

but I'm not surprised at all because this team is composed of professionals.

It's composed of guys who understand what they have to do and who are winners,

unlike the comment you just made. Gentlemen, good night.

Way to go, Craig.

A spectacular move!

The game's over!

Chicago Stadium is going wild!

First of all, there's no backstabbing going on here.

It's time for me to move on.

This will be Phil's last year as the coach of the Bulls.

- Are the expectations too high? - Where do we go from here?

The only question: how long can it last?

We're at the United Center in Chicago,

opening of the NBA playoffs.

Tonight, game one of round one

and the start of a best-of-five series against the New Jersey Nets.

Michael Jordan said to lose a game to the Nets,

lose a game to the Nets, his team would have to "fall asleep."

Can that backfire on him or does that just not happen to Superman?

These are the Bulls. They're not worried about the Nets.

This is a sweep. Bring the brooms out, 3-0, move on to the next series, man.

Come on.

Starts off with hard work, ends in champagne. Let's start.

- What time is it? - Game time!

The playoffs is the highest level of competition that we have in our game.

You got 82 games in the regular season,

but you can kick all that aside. The playoffs is the playoffs.

And to be able to play against the best competition,

that was the driving force for me, without a doubt.

Opening tip, and it'll be Bulls possession.

And Keith Van Horn gives the Nets the lead.

Now, you can see the athleticism of the New Jersey Nets early on,

and a shocked crowd and Phil Jackson watches the Bulls trail by seven.

And here is Kerry Kittles with a great sweeping lay-in,

and New Jersey have taken a 12-3 lead.

Here's Ron Harper, stuffing it through.

And the Bulls have come back to trail John Calipari's Nets.

Jordan over Kittles, hits.

But the Nets keep coming. Under two minutes to go, it's Gatling.

He had 24, here are two of them.

Tied at 89, we go to overtime.

Knocked away, stolen by Michael! MJ on the right.

Michael dunks the ball and a foul! Oh, my!

And here come the Nets. Douglas for three. At the horn.

Short. Rebound Pippen, and that'll do it.

The Bulls win it. Not without a scare from the Nets.

A pretty bumpy start for the Bulls.

If Friday's opener is any indication, Chicago could be in for a long series.

Watching this team as they embarked on the playoffs,

you just had the feeling that Michael Jordan

was mentally, emotionally exhausted.

He kind of looked like the Michael Jordan of 1993.

Oliver Miller plays it. Here's Johnson.

Johnson gets... No, he could not get it off.

Knocked away by Grant. It's over!

The Chicago Bulls have made it three straight NBA championships!

After we won the championship, I sat in the gym with my father.

In the back of my mind, I knew that was probably my last game.

And no one really knew except for my father and myself.

He was my rock. You know, we were very close.

He constantly gave me advice.

I remember in ninth grade, I got suspended three times in one year,

and my father pulled me aside that summer and said,

"Look, you don't look like you're headed in the right direction.

You wanna go about doing all this mischievous stuff, you can forget sports."

That's all I needed to hear.

From that point on, it was like tunnel vision,

and I never got in trouble from that point on.

He had a very strong influence on Michael's life.

He just was a wonderful, positive man.

Hey... And I feel cool with this man.

I wanna negotiate my contract...

If you knew Michael, you pretty much knew James

because they were always together. They were very close. Best friends.

We'd hang out before the games,

and he'd find some kid in the stands, somewhere,

some kid that never had a chance in the world to meet Michael Jordan.

When the game was over, he'd walk that kid in the locker room.

The kid would be through the roof.

James Jordan was there

when his son Michael led the Chicago Bulls to their first NBA championship in 1991.

James and Deloris Jordan remained an anchor for him.

They attended every Bulls game they could.

Around the NBA,

James Jordan relished his stand-in role for a superstar son.

To tell you how proud I am, uh...

I'd have to search for more words than what I've got.

He's a voice of reason that always drove and challenged me.

That's the type of father I had.

- Like a friend? - Yeah, like a friend.

I had to pick up Michael's father from the airport.

He was supposed to come into town for a charity event Michael was throwing.

And I went to the airport to pick up his dad, and he never showed up.

So, of course, I called his mom and said, "Hey, Pops isn't here."

We knew he was down at the Hilton Head house, playing golf.

When we didn't hear from him, we both thought,

"Well, okay, they're still playing golf."

She said, "Well, just come on back. Don't worry about him.

He probably got sidetracked a bit. He'll show up."

I was off doing my thing, and my mom said she hadn't talked to him in some time.

He drives and goes down to Wilmington to visit old friends,

stay a couple of days, drive back,

but my mother's always in dialogue with him.

When she got worried, we all got worried.

Was it unusual for him to be out of contact?

Oh, yes, definitely unusual.

I knew something wasn't right.

James Jordan, the father of Bulls superstar Michael Jordan,

has not been seen for three weeks.

His car was found stripped and hidden

in some woods near Fayetteville, North Carolina.

The car, a red Lexus, was missing the license plates.

It was battered. The windows were broken out.

You know, we try to backtrack what his actions were.

He left a certain day. He was driving back,

and just got tired. Instead of driving, he pulled off and he just took a nap.

Next thing you know, things happen the way they happen.

We're coming on the air now with word that the body of James Jordan

has been found in a creek near the border between South and North Carolina.

Investigators say Jordan was driving late at night

when he pulled off the road to take a nap...

And he was awakened.

And at that time, he was shot once in the chest.

Two 18-year-old men are charged

with the robbery and murder of James Jordan.

As for Michael Jordan,

he arrived back home today in North Carolina.

Back to face the most painful moments of an already troubled year.

Meanwhile, Jordan's murder adds another bitter twist to the dark side

of an all-American success story.

You know, that's just such a...

It's just such a horrible, hard thing to talk about.

I can remember that, flying into... North Carolina.

Michael couldn't tie his tie.

So I had to tie the tie for him, and that moment was just so hard.

So hard of what we were there for.

We all were together, and it was devastating,

but it was about support. We had to support each other.

My mother was so strong.

And the first thing she says, "You gotta be thankful."

And I started looking at the positive.

Michael's the one who got up and spoke, and he spoke about, I think,

what a father he had been to him. More of a father but also a friend.

He'd been there. A lot of things he wouldn't share with anybody else,

he shared with his dad.

One of the things he taught me is that you have to take a negative

and turn it into a positive.

So I started looking to the other side of it,

and that helped me get through it.

When his dad was murdered,

all the articles, the speculation that came out,

it was not journalism's finest hour.

The violent death sparked a half-dozen theories about the motive,

some including possible connections to gambling.

That was really bad. That was really unfair.

Imagine your father gets killed and they're blaming you?

That was really cheap-shot stuff.

It did hurt,

but you had people that were throwing darts who wanted to hurt me anyway.

It wasn't from the people that I loved,

or people that knew me and people that care.

It was the people that got tired of me being on top.

Basketball superstar Michael Jordan

issued a statement Thursday.

He expressed that he was outraged by some media speculation

linking his behavior to his father's murder.

Jordan said, "I simply cannot comprehend

how others could intentionally pour salt in my open wound

by insinuating that mistakes in my life

are in some way connected to my father's death."

There isn't a thimble's worth of evidence

to connect that horrible incident

to Michael Jordan's gambling

or any other aspect of Michael Jordan's behavior.

Police said it was no more than brutality and greed,

that James Jordan "could have been any one of us."

What is still unclear and will be for some time

is what effect this tragedy will have on Michael Jordan

and his future with the Chicago Bulls.

Basketball? Haven't thought about basketball.

I didn't think about basketball before all this happened, so, uh...

Right now, everything's tentative for my schedule from this point on.

David Falk came over to me at a charity dinner

that was sponsored by Michael,

and said, "You're not gonna believe this, but Michael wants to retire."

I said, "I don't believe it."

At that time, we were coming off of three championships.

I fulfilled my responsibility to the city,

to the Bulls, to my teammates.

I did not try to talk him out of it, but I did say to him,

"You can't make a final decision until you talk to Phil."

Where was that meeting?