I don't think this is a black-white thing, but nowadays guys make a whole lot of money and there's very few players out there whose fans really believe they want to win anymore. Michael Jordan wants to, whether it's in Ping-Pong, bid whist, pitching pennies, or whatever. But I bring up the question to a lot of athletes today, black and white, whether they have the will to win. Everybody wants to win on Saturday afternoon or Sunday afternoon when the game begins and the cheerleaders are out there and everybody tunes in. But the games are won in the preparation--are they willing to do what it takes to win before the game ever starts? Seems like some of them just are making so much money that they don't care. But they can just as often be vilified in the media for caring too much. So the media portrayal is one thing. But not playing hard, that's almost criminal. Not caring is criminal. Not trying to be the best ballplayer you can be is criminal. "That pride and desire to be the best, to keep improving," Gervin told me. "Many guys don't have it anymore. I don't know if it's upbringing--it's gotta be upbringing to some degree. The things I was taught when I was young--morals, principles, spirituality--I wonder sometimes do our young people have any of those values, if they are holding on to their humanity, not becoming objects. A guy really has to come to the understanding of what is important to him, Spike. "All basketball players have an Achilles heel--they want to play, and they want to play well--but some of them are getting this money, and I'm happy that they are, but some of them aren't working, and I ain't saying working for the money. I'm saying working to be better. Work on your hook shot. Work on your going left and right. We had a guy named Abdul-Jabbar who shot a hook for twenty years. Nobody does it today. These guys today don't know who he is, who Oscar Robertson is. They go back to Dr. J, that's it. I don't see 'em going back no further. That's where my stuff came from--Hawk, Dr. J. I tried to emulate Doc, then add my own, come up with something original. You had to watch somebody coming up. You need that--a pattern, a model. You gotta come out here and work. You've got to bust your butt. You've got to come to practice, and come ready to work. This is what I did to be successful. Hard to motivate a guy who doesn't want to work. They're glad they've got the good job, reached the goal, can rest on their laurels, getting a good check, and will take everything else that goes along with it...but sometimes, when you take that word ëstruggle' out from in front of you, then it's easy for a guy to quit getting better. You get that big check, the struggle is gone, and then you've got all that in front of you--fine women, all that you can see. And you don't know--even she's got a plan!" To be a professional athlete and not care if you win or lose--to me, that's sacrilegious. Why? Because the artistic innovations--to say nothing of the drama--come within the context of winning the game. That's the picture that's being painted. That is the canvas. Sometimes it takes creativity to accomplish it. How do I do this in order to score or to stop the other guy? No one may have ever seen it before, what I'm about to do. I don't know, but this is what I had to do in that moment to make it happen, to take another step toward winning the game. Not looking good. Winning. I don't think Charlie Parker said, "Let me think of something now that nobody else has done, so people can say, ëOoo.'"It was between him and the instrument, him and the music. Artists don't approach it that other way. They play what they feel. It was something inside of them. That's the way Michael Jordan plays. Same thing with Ali. Creative self-expression by mental control of human muscularity. That's what it all is, really, all the arts. You have guys who manufacture it. That's where I would put a Deion Sanders, he has a definite goal of marketing himself, to make his services more valuable. And it has worked for him, that sizzle, that flash. It's more like a marketing thing with him, though Deion is truly a great athlete and might have had to do what he did in order to be paid commensurately with his talents. Dennis Rodman, too. What can I do to make myself stand out? But it is not within the context of the game. And I wonder if sometimes you start to believe your own hype, your own game. A choreographed dance here. Changing your hair color in pastels. Full-body tattoos. Mascara. Marrying yourself. Wearing wedding gowns. That has nothing to do with playing or winning the game or artistry. Distinguish myself from the rest. That's just manufactured expression, that's all marketing and promotion, and it's hollow. No one else ever had the instrument that Michael Jordan has. He has the total game, the total flawless package, and he's the best promoted and most marketable athlete since Babe Ruth. Michael has great will, too. In a competitive sense, and probably an artistic sense too, that's what gets him over. Forget about his great athletic abilities. What I most admire about him is his will to win. It is unparalleled. He just refuses to lose and a lot of times these guys are evenly matched physically. It's a matter of who wants to win it more and who can exercise his will within the context and confines of the problem at hand. The guy with the biggest heart won't give up, just keeps on coming and he makes the other guy quit. Muhammad Ali's will beat Joe Frazier in Manila in 1975. Jordan does the same thing. He makes the opponent believe as he believes, that if it keeps on going long enough, he is going to prevail because it is predestined, so he demoralizes the other guy, takes his spirit, and eventually makes him quit. Hesitate. Takes his heart. Makes him doubt. And that is all it takes against Jordan. It happened to Dan Majerle in the NBA finals, Phoenix vs. Chicago, in 1993. I don't think Dan has been the same since. He had a shot in game six, a good shot at the end that would have sent the series to game seven. He was open, right baseline. He went up, and you could see him looking around, breaking form, thinking of Michael Jordan--where is he, I know he's here--and he pulled the string, missed. That was it.