Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty

When Denver’s Ricky Pierce went after Payton, the Glove snapped, “I’ll kill your family.”

Then something truly unexpected unfolded: Dennis Rodman started to sob. “I’m never going to win,” he said between tears. “No matter what I do for this league, for the game of basketball, I’m never going to win.” He opened a piece of paper, pointed to some letters. “I’ve got 10 charities here that I’m going to give $10,000 to. You tell me if that’s

This was eating at Burger King following a nine-course bonanza at Per Se. The Nets were a 52-regular-season-win team with one superstar, point guard Jason Kidd, and a slew of mehs who would be sixth and seventh men in Jackson’s rotation.

He just knew it. “A team always beats a group of individuals,” he said. “We picked a poor time to be a group of individuals.”

As a freshman at Lower Merion, Bryant made Downer’s varsity squad, starting and averaging 18 points for a team that went 4-20.

“When he’d go up and dunk, it reminded me of a Christmas tree, with defenders hanging off of him like ornaments,” said Greg Kite, Orlando’s backup center. “Or they were the bowling pins, and he was an enormous 300-pound ball.

At the behest of his wife, Ann, he hired a designer to create www.delharris.com, then charged visitors $20 for a one-year membership that included (as written on the home page) “these great benefits”: an autographed photograph, an “official” Del’s Club membership card, a quarterly newsletter, and a birthday card. Fewer than 100 people subscribed.

In the fall of 1983, when he was a 20-year-old college sophomore, Malone had returned to his hometown of Summerfield, Louisiana, and impregnated a 13-year-old named Gloria Bell. When, on May 3, 1984, she gave birth to a son named Demetress, Karl was nowhere to be found.

He immediately brought calm to a frenzied scene, presenting each player with a book (the first he gave Jordan was Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison), lowering expectations, cutting back on Collins’s intensity, letting the men express themselves as individuals.