Bathrooms Reads #15: THE JORDAN RULES by Sam Smith

 

I am not a sports guy. However, living in a house as I do with my parents and most of my younger brothers (all of whom are very into sports), coupled with the fact that every afternoon I read the USA TODAY and PROVIDENCE JOURNAL sports pages at lunch (along with all the other sections, mind), added to how I sometimes listen to one of the local sports radio stations on my drives to work (though less so these days after they cancelled my favorite show a few months ago, in August of this year, specifically 93.7 WEEI's afternoon drive show JONES & MEGO WITH ARCAND, which played from 2-6 in the afternoons Monday through Friday), means that, through such background osmosis, I'm at least generally aware of what is going on in the world of sports and who some of the big names are. However, reading about sports or hearing people talk about it is one thing, but actually watching games is beyond my ken . . . I find most sporting events mind-numbingly boring, with one exception: I can, at the very least, watch televised basketball games without losing interest. 

My interest in basketball began sometime in the early 1990s, when my younger brothers and my dad started collecting basketball trading cards as a hobby (I myself collected such cards, though only for a short time). This interest in basketball cards led to an interest in basketball in general, and my brothers and I each decided to pick an NBA team to be our favorite team; I went with the Utah Jazz, mainly because at that time in my life I was obsessed with things that began with the letter "U," and in some ways it was a good pick because the Jazz were a very good team in the 90s, with some great players like Karl Malone and John Stockton (the latter of whom quickly became, and still is, my favorite male basketball player). My brother Tom was very into the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan in particular, and he eventually got the book THE JORDAN RULES by Sam Smith. I myself eventually became a fan of this book, and years later would get my own copy of it (pictured above). This interest in basketball reached its peak for me when I began writing a small series of basketball thriller novels in the mid-to-late 1990s (mainly BULLET GAMES in 1996 and THE HORNET QUEEN in 1997). 

THE JORDAN RULES (which, like some of the other bathroom books I've covered in this series, I finally read "for real" this year) is a fascinating look at the Bulls 1990-1991 championship run (in other words, covering the start of the first Bulls dynasty), funny and well-written, and I recommend it to fans of basketball in general, as not only does it provide a compelling portrait of both Jordan and his then-coach Phil Jackson, but is also a useful exploration of team dynamics, and how such a disparate group of men can come together, put aside their differences, and triumph (while on the subject, Smith's less well-known sequel to THE JORDAN RULES, THE SECOND COMING, which dealt with Jordan's return to the world of basketball after a failed attempt at becoming a baseball player, is also worth seeking out). Incidentally, some of the material covered in this book was used in the Netflix Michael Jordan THE LAST DANCE documentary back in 2020, which also saw an appearance by Smith himself.