When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan's Last Comeback [Paperback]

Michael Leahy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2005

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. Washington Post writer Michael Leahy reveals the striking contrast between the public Jordan and the man whose personal style alienated teammates and the Washington owner who ousted him.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

After serving as president and part owner of the Washington Wizards for two years, Jordan, bored by his executive duties and frustrated by the team's poor play, returned to the court in 2001 in a bid to revitalize the struggling basketball franchise. But the aging superstar's attempt to resurrect the team flopped as the Wizards failed to make the playoffs in either of Jordan's two playing seasons. While the highs and lows of Jordan's comeback are known to most basketball fans, Leahy, a Washington Post feature writer who covered Jordan's return, offers an in-depth look at the inner turmoil that plagued the Jordan-led Wizards. In a smartly written, often angry work that is as much a sports story as a psychology study and condemnation of the media that built up the Jordan myth, Leahy not only documents Jordan's performance on the floor, but examines what motivated him to play despite serious knee problems. Leahy also deals with the role sportswriters (he makes it clear he isn't one) play in building America's athletes into godlike characters, a practice he abhors. Leahy has no use for idol worship and casts all three of the book's main figures—Jordan, coach Doug Collins and majority owner Abe Pollin—in unfavorable lights. This engaging read is marred by one flaw: Leahy's tendency to insert himself into the story.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Michael Jordan may have been the greatest basketball player ever to lace 'em up, but he has not always been a likable man. At 38, three years retired from his championship run in Chicago, Jordan was serving as president of the Washington Wizards when he decided to join the team as a player. Washington Post staffer Leahy observed it all, from the triumphs--now and then MJ did seem to be an ageless wonder--to the very ugly moments of humiliated coaches and teammates who did not measure up to Jordan's personal standard of excellence and acquiescence. This is not a pretty portrayal of Jordan, but it is consistent with the assessment of his strengths and weaknesses offered by Sam Smith in The Jordan Rules (1991). If anything, this account is tinged with melancholy in its portrayal of the alpha male finally being exiled from the herd. This is an intelligent, persuasively written account of an athlete who remains one of our most recognizable celebrities. Expect the phone lines to be buzzing on the sports talk shows. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (November 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743254279
• ISBN-13: 978-0743254274
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #472,160 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( J ) > Jordan, Michael

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Milestone Book For Realists, January 7, 2005

By 

Thomas J. Kouns "thomas kouns" (new york) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan's Last Comeback (Hardcover)

This is a groundbreaking book in many respects. I am an ardent NBA fan but have found it nearly impossible to find 'real' biographies on the real goings-on in NBA locker rooms. I believe most sportswriters are either afraid to anger their sources (many examples of that in this book) or lack the journalistic know how to do in-depth reporting.

I thouroughly enjoyed the book. It paints a detailed picture of an NBA locker room and the dysfunctionalities that go on. I came away with a very clear picture of Jordan as a sad figure in a sense who is self-absorbed, immature and really has little understanding of life beyond the small and plastic world he inhabits. I actually felt somewhat sorry for him by the end of the book. The portrait came as no suprise given the surreal environment and idolic treatment these athletes (who in the big picture put a ball through a hoop for a living though God bless em for it) receive at a very early age. You can't really blame Jordan as he is a product of his stilted environment. On the other hand, it makes those ads and "Be Like Mike' endorsements ring hollow and ironic.

The book is also an interesting study on how fans need athletes to validate themselves. From the Wizards minority owner who basically buys Jordan's aquantance for a piece of his stake in the franchise to the reporters who feel privilaged to ask Jordan a 'staged' question even if they aren't doing any real reporting. To the Wizards (Collins)coach who is so enamored of Jordan that he is afraid to make a move without his approval to the detriment of the team.

This is a book for true NBA or Jordan followers or those interested in the distorted relationship between pro athletes and their fans. I have a lot of respect for this author for daring to accurately report a man-God. It should be noted that the author did not get into any 'sleazy' details of Jordan's life but striclty used his behavior/interactions in the locker room environment to define his subject. The book did make me appreciate the rare elite athlete who still manages to have strong values and character despite the temptations and obstacles in his way.

26 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Emperor Had No Clothes, January 31, 2005

By 

Otherone (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan's Last Comeback (Hardcover)

I am glad to see this book has already generated a good deal of buzz and reviews. I lived in the DC area during the "Jordan Era" both his management of and play for, the Wizards, and I must say (and perhaps I am biased) that this book is a mostly accurate reflection of what many of us suspected about MJ when he came to town. To wit: (1) He had little/no respect for owner Abe Pollin; (2) He installed flunkies in senior management positions, ostensibly to do the scouting, negotiating, etc he apparently was uninterested in doing; (3) His "return" was one part attempt to restore "buzz" around his name and brand and a second part an attempt to whitewash/hide his shortcomings as an executive by pulling the team to near .500; (4) As soon as he retired, Pollin shivved him and showed him the door.

In short, there are no "winners" or "good guys" in this story, indeed, everyone comes out looking badly. Jordan is portrayed as a distant, arrogant, demeaning teammate who put his own self interest ahead of his team, even as he was holding the Coach's puppet strings and using the media to communicate not-so-thinly veiled threats at the very people he signed/drafted. Pollin comes across as a money-hungry owner who used Jordan to sell tickets and then tossed him overboard roughly 3.5 seconds after his final game. Ultimately, the relationship was one where both parties were USING the other, there was no trust, no sense of team, no sense of "we're all in this together", so why should be be surprised it blew up so quickly.

Leahy has received some heat in other reviews for injecting bias and/or reflecting his own opinion, but hey, THAT'S HIS JOB. He's providing an angle, an opinion, it's his book. MJ or his defenders are free to give their "side" of the story (the jabs at Wilbon are interesting, though not surprising).

The truth is, as an executive, MJ was mediocare at best (an opinion I think supported by the fact that he's received exactly ZERO GM/Pres. of Player Personnel offers since leaving DC) as an executive, made a lot of poor decisions (not trading the #1 for Elton Brand and a pick ... idiotic, any fantasy geek would have made that deal in a heartbeat, dealing for Stack and giving up a good young player in Rip Hamilton, useless signings like Oakley, Laettner, etc .. the list goes on and on). He did not move to DC, rarely was in town (sightings became media events they were so rare), seemed to have an entitlement and perogative about how he did things that hey, if I was an owner, I would be peeved about too. As Leahy points out, MJ had poor/little appreciation for Pollin and the importance he placed on loyalty. Did Pollin use MJ, clearly, and his motives were far from pure, but it's also his team, no one made MJ come to DC.

Before you start crying for MJ and his departure, consider that he got Coach Collins a $10 million severance, payouts for the rest of his personally hand picked lower management and still had his hundreds of millions intact. Indeed, the buzz generated by his return to basketball enriched him, I would think, far more in the long run, than Pollin. Finally, look at what has happened to the Wizards SINCE MJ left. They put in a guy, Ernie Grunfeld, who is actually a qualified/knowledgable GM, he has traded for Jamison, signed Arenas, and helped develop other guys and the team is now on the cusp of a playoff spot. MJ poisoned the well here, and it took people who actually studied and worked hard at putting teams together to fix it.

The perfect coda to MJ's stay in DC was the photo of him leaving MCI after Pollin showed him the door, it's a shot of MJ in his convertible, top down, from behind, you see the Illinois license plate. Very apt summry of his brief stay in Washington.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on Jordan I've ever read, November 8, 2004

By 

Bill Ryan (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan's Last Comeback (Hardcover)

This is the finest book I've ever read on Michael Jordan. It is one of the best sports books written in many years, I think. What Michael Leahy has done so magnificently is wipe away the stardust from our eyes and enable to see what the Jordan comeback meant to the star, a city and a struggling team. It is sympathetic in parts, and tough in parts. It is unflinchingly honest and brilliantly written. The way he writes about basketball games was reason alone for me to devour the book. The writing is so vivid and powerful. And I thought I was seeing Jordan for the first time. I finished the book thinking I finally understood the measure of his psyche, and the pressures bearing on him, and the stresses felt by his teammates and others who seemed to chafe under his incessant demands that they either win or satisfy his other demands. Leahy does an outstanding job of putting the media under the microscope too, which was pretty eye-opening, with his point clearly being that the media in many cases gave Jordan flattering publicity in exchange for the hope that they might receive special access to him. The portrait here of everything in the two seasons is gripping. One of my favorite parts was reading of the day-to-day interaction of Jordan with his teammates and coaches, the preparing for games, the pressures building, the teammates deferring, the coach's anxiety wrenching and impossible to conceal. Some of his young teammates seem like terrific guys, caught up in a difficult situation that had them reeling. The story is so compelling and wonderfully told that I found myself feeling sympathy for all of them. They seem so boxed in, especially Jordan. The book was a great exploration of the effect of long-term celebrity on a sports idol, how stars get caught in a bubble and are often the last to see the major problems about to pull them down. I hope for the best for Jordan, but I think there is an overarching lesson in the book about the dangers of being too focused on a game to the exclusion of many other things, which is a lesson for all athletes. The game was everything to Jordan, and maybe that was not all for the good always. I hope Leahy has in mind another book on athletes and the sports culture. This book here is one powerful and sensational piece of work.