"It was almost suicidal just to be a part of this team'' were the words chosen by forward Scottie Pippen when he described the 2000-01 Portland Trailblazers, the team full of All-Stars and a $90 million payroll.
"It wasn't a professional team. There was so much slippage, so many fines for being late for practice, for team buses, games and all kinds of mess. All that stuff just took its toll on me as a player. There I was, being a captain of a team with players who didn't want to show up for work or follow basic rules of being on time and giving their all in practice and in the games."
"We had players feuding with each other, feuding with the coach and the coach and players feuding with management. It was an unstable situation where you just didn't know what to expect every day you went to work. If it wasn't one thing, it was another, and you'd go to work expecting the worst.''
As a consequence coach Mike Dunleavy got fired, to which Pippen responded that it ''wasn't really his fault''. "Dunleavy's a nice guy. But maybe that was the problem. Maybe sometimes he was too nice. It was my most difficult season because I'd never been on a team with so many problems.'' One such problem extended from teammate Rasheed Wallace, the volatile but talented forward who racked up a league record 41 technical fouls this past season, breaking his own record.
Dunleavy and teammates pleaded with Wallace to calm down, which he agreed to do, but it was always the same. "We couldn't win without Wallace in the game, and he knew it,'' Pippen said. "We'd talk to him again and again, and he'd promise to apply more self-control. But our problems involved more than Rasheed.''