"He didn't get technical fouls," Copeland continued. "Those little things, those characteristics are what you look for in a coach. When to calm down, when to change the flow. I remember I watched him coach recently, and he does the same thing. He manipulates. He negotiates the moment."

Time to change

After seven NBA seasons, in the fall of 1984, in training camp with Portland, Jordan felt a step slow, tired, almost as if he had mononucleosis or some other sickness. The Blazers played back-to-back exhibition games against the Utah Jazz, both at altitude. Jordan was getting beat by Utah's young point guard. (Later, Jordan felt redeemed as that young guard, John Stockton, went on to greatness.)

Jordan called his college coach, Young, and said, "I think I've had enough." Young told him a volunteer position waited at Rutgers.

Jordan wrote a letter of resignation to Portland coach Jack Ramsay because, Jordan explained, when you resigned, teams couldn't call you for a year, and he didn't want the temptation.

"We flew into Portland from Utah. I wrote my letter. I sent it in, took a red-eye out of Portland to Newark, went right from Newark to a Rutgers practice," Jordan said. "This was November, I didn't miss a day. I played in the NBA one night, coached the next day."

"When he called, you're almost going to create a position because he's a good guy, and you want him around," Young said. "You can't get guys with that kind of ability in that position very often. And there he was, 24 hours later, on the floor."

The way Jordan tells it, he got his start in the NBA coaching ranks because St. Jean was looking for a minority assistant. St. Jean was friends with Bob Wenzel, whom Jordan had worked under during his second stint as a full-time assistant at Rutgers.

"Garry St. Jean had just got the Kings' job," Jordan said. "St. Jean called Bob. They were talking, and St. Jean said 'I've got to find a minority assistant to do the video.' The minority owner for the Kings . . . wanted a minority at the time."

Jordan talked with St. Jean two or three times via telephone. Then he moved to Sacramento. Five years later, new Kings general manager Geoff Petrie shocked Jordan.

"We flew back from L.A. We had lost to the Clippers," Jordan remembered. "We got in late, and as I was getting off the plane, Geoff stopped me and said, 'I want you to follow me to my house.' Maybe it's 2 a.m., and Geoff said, 'I want you to stay here tonight. We're making a change tomorrow.' I stayed in his house overnight, and I stayed up all night writing pages and pages of thoughts, eight, nine, 10 pages of notebook paper, 'What's my philosophy. What do I believe in?' "

While in Sacramento, Jordan worked closely with former Princeton head coach Pete Carril, the master of an intricate motion offense that had been dubbed the Princeton offense despite Carril's repeated attempts to explain he had incorporated much from the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks.

"If you're anywhere near Eddie, the conversation, somewhere along the line, will turn to basketball," Carril said. "He's really into the game. He's almost addicted to the game, really."

"Pete and I had spent a year or more talking about the offense," Jordan said. "I got it from the master himself. Not handed down. We spent hours, breakfasts, dinner, writing on napkins and paper."

Jordan said he loves this offense because it's movement. It's purity. It's not standing around watching one player try to "out-athletic" another.

"Once in a while he calls me," Carril said. "I spent a week with him in Washington last year, working on some stuff. We're good friends. What happened there in Sacramento is we developed a friendship. If he ever asked me to come to Philadelphia, I certainly would."

Despite being an assistant in New Jersey after his firing from Sacramento, the Nets ran Jordan's NBA-tailored Princeton offense. During that time, Stefanski was in New Jersey's front office, working as assistant general manager.

"The best thing for Eddie, I think, is Stefanski was with him in Jersey for two years," Young said. "They went to the NBA Finals. There is nobody in Philadelphia, and very few in the NBA, who know what Jordan can do on the floor like Stefanski does.

"Stefanski saw everything Eddie did. If Eddie was a typical assistant in New Jersey, Stefanski doesn't hire him."

Young spent four seasons as Jordan's assistant coach in Washington. "Eddie will watch film forever and ever," Young said. "I know a lot of coaches watch a lot of film, but very few will watch as much as Eddie. I worried about him like I would with anybody in that position. He would fall asleep watching film. He'd wake up and watch film. Most of the time, he'd wake up in the middle of the night and watch film. He falls asleep talking to more people because of that."