Aside from the obvious interest surrounding Richard Esquinas's book "Michael and Me, Our Gambling Addiction . . . My Cry for Help," are the author's insights on how Jordan feels about other players.
The book, mailed last week to NBA writers around the country, includes highly publicized stories of $250,000 putts and million-dollar debts. But it also includes intriguing opinions on Jordan's personality.Esquinas wrote, "About the only way you could set (Jordan) off was to say something about Detroit, especially something nice about Detroit. He hated everybody on the Pistons. He talked one time about how he would beat Magic's (rear) in a one-on-one competition, but thought the whole idea was stupid. And he thought Larry Bird was a trash-talking hick.
"When (Jordan) was griping about perceptions that he ran the Chicago Bulls, I was amused."
Later in the book Esquinas quotes Jordan on the proposed one-on-one televised game between Magic Johnson and himself, saying, "I don't know why Magic would want to go through with it. He knows I'd beat him. My game's much more attuned to a one-on-one situation."
Bobby Knight revisited? Former Indiana player Quinn Buckner - the new Dallas coach - has made some eerily Knight-like moves lately. He reportedly has been hostile toward reporters asking even innocuous questions and threatened not to speak with one reporter who included the names of Buckner's children in an article.
Being a studio host for NBC, Buckner undoubtedly understands a reporter's job. Nevertheless, he apparently has decided to take the path of his mentor, Knight, and forget about winning friends and influencing people.
Remember Robin Ficker? He's the Bullets' fan who screams at opposing teams during timeouts; the man former Jazz coach Frank Layden once spit at during a game.
Ficker was back in the news this week. Miami Herald writer Shawn Powell reports that Ficker was escorted from the arena during the June 11 Bulls-Suns game for yelling at Chicago's bench during a timeout.
"He should have been thrown out of Game 1," said Chicago forward Stacey King. "I'm glad fans are finally getting tired of him."
Or at least the security.
The death of Croatian basketball great Drazen Petrovic convinced a Tel Aviv suburban high school student to change his name.
Levan Ben-Levy changed his name to Levan Petrovic to honor the New Jersey Nets guard who died in an auto accident June 7. The student is also mourning Petrovic according to Jewish tradition - growing a beard. "Some people tell me it's not good, you should only mourn this way for a parent, but for me, he was exactly like a parent," the student said.
Levan attended basketball camps in Yugoslavia six straight years to see Petrovic.
AND THEN SOME: Newly hired Indiana coach Larry Brown on coaching in Indianapolis: "Just getting back to being in this state and having ABA ties, this was always the premier ABA team, I thought, in terms of interest, in terms of management, in terms of players and enthusiasm, so it's kind of neat." . . . Seattle coach George Karl on his "no-stars" team: "We have some of the best players I've ever coached. I think they're stars. Are they stars on the national scale? I don't know. I think you can do it by committee. One night it's Ricky Pierce, the next night Sam Perkins, the next night our bench. We win a lot of basketball game with depth and the ability to wear people down." . . . Charles Barkley on having his arm drained prior to the Suns' Game 3 win last Sunday: "I'm the best one-armed basketball player in the world." . . . Word is that Isaac Austin, who has fought a continual battle with weight since joining the Jazz two years ago, is getting trim and mean working camps with Karl Malone this summer.
This column includes materials gathered from outside news sources.