On the eve of the 1996 NBA Finals, George Karl found himself in a sticky situation: He and fellow University of North Carolina alum Michael Jordan were dining at the same steakhouse.
Normally, Karl would have approached Jordan to chat and wish him well. On that night, however, he did not.
“Well, I thought about it when I was at dinner, and why didn’t he come over and say hello to me?” Karl asked on The DA Show, laughing. “Did I stiff him, or did he stiff me? You can interpret it either way. But I did talk to my team [about not socializing with Jordan].”
That was the recommendation of former Pistons assistant Brendan Malone.
“He was with us the whole playoffs, and he recommended to us that we have no socializing because Michael has a way of playing mental games and motivating himself – and sometimes his team – to a higher level of anger, intensity, and enthusiasm,” Karl said. “So as the meal went on, it’s a busy restaurant, I concluded probably the best thing for me to do is not make eye contact with him in the first game and wish him luck – that way, and not in a public space.
“I did talk to Sam Perkins, I did talk to a couple other players on my team – because they do have good relationship with Michael – and I asked them not to socialize,” Karl continued. “I would be a hypocrite and it would be breaking the code going into the seven-game series. [It] probably would have been wrong. That was my decision. Today, I probably would have texted him and said, ‘Hey, I’m not going to come over and say hello because of that.’ But we didn’t have texts back then.”
Hypocrite or not, Karl did not want to give Jordan any ammunition to use against Seattle in the series.
“As I said, I might have said something to Michael that might have stirred the beast a little bit more,” Karl said. “Michael has ways of motivating himself, and I admire that. He is a special talent that does play with a special intensity. That’s what we need more of. We need more of these types of leaders and more of these type of competitors – because fans love that guy.”
Jordan led the Bulls to a 3-0 series lead. Seattle won Games 4 and 5 before the Bulls closed out the series in Chicago in Game 6.
“I thought they fought hard coming back from a 3-0 deficit and scaring the champions in many ways,” Karl said. “And if you look back on the stats, we actually did a pretty good job covering Michael Jordan.”
Seattle held Jordan under 30 points in five of the six games. Nate McMillan, who missed the first three games of the series, played a key role in that.
“I really feel if Nate McMillan was healthy, we would have taken it to seven games,” Karl said. “I really do feel that way. Nate McMillan was statistically – in our analytics – the third-best defensive player in the NBA that year. He was the glue to our defense. He gave our younger players and Shawn [Kemp] and Gary [Payton] a confidence, and we just missed him. The two games we [won], Nate didn’t play great in those two games, but the soul of our team was with us, and it meant something to us. When you’ve got two really good teams, two great teams, going after each other, it’s the little things of basketball that win those games, and Nate McMillan was our leader of doing the little things for our team.”