Bull Buster

Scott Skiles was the ideal coach to pull the Chicago Bulls out of their post-Jordan abyss. A hard-nosed taskmaster, he molded a collection of raw underachievers into a unit that, much like Skiles in his playing days, hustles and sweats and scraps. But now that the team is respectable again, is the short-fused, sharp-tongued Skiles the right guy to lead the Bulls back to glory?

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The Bulls, down five at the start of the fourth quarter, have seen this movie before-blowing a big lead, then losing in a heartbreaker. Tonight, however, they keep playing hard as the game wears on. Passes snap again. Ben Gordon nails a jumper. Hinrich adds a jumper of his own and pops a three. The Bulls unleash a 7-0 run and roar ahead.


The state championship game that made Skiles's career springs right out of the movie Hoosiers. "The state championship in high-school basketball in Indiana was the ultimate dream," says Wendel. "It was like the Super Bowl, the World Series, and the Final Four all wrapped into one." Skiles had been the state's leading scorer that season. But now they were playing Gary Roosevelt, a much larger school and a heavy favorite.

Skiles started slowly, but in the second half dominated. At the buzzer, he hit a 22-foot shot to send the game into overtime, then scored several more points to secure a 75-74 double-overtime victory for Plymouth. The school became the smallest in Indiana since Milan High in 1954-on which Hoosiers was based-to win the state championship. But though hundreds of Plymouth's townspeople lined the streets and thousands packed into the gym to honor the team, Skiles up to that point had attracted only mild interest among big-name schools.

Purdue had made overtures, but one of coach Gene Keady's assistants had inexplicably sent a letter inviting Skiles to look at other schools (an incensed Keady fired the scout, Skiles says); Digger Phelps, then head coach at Notre Dame, showed faint interest. The god of Indiana basketball at the time, Bobby Knight, inquired, then let it drop.

Jud Heathcote, head coach at Michigan State University, had never heard of Skiles before the day a booster called to say Heathcote ought to be recruiting him. "We got these calls all the time," recalls Heathcote, now retired. "But I call the coach at Plymouth and he sends me this fuzzy eight-millimeter film. Well, the thing was so dark it was like the Keystone Kops. I couldn't see the numbers of the players."

When Heathcote went to see Skiles play in the state championship tournament, he stared in disbelief at the player. "I look at this guy with kind of spread out feet, and what looks like kind of a pot stomach. He's almost an albino, he's so white-and I say, ‘That's Scott Skiles?'" But he had a presence out there, a presence that said he's running the show."

After the state championship tournament, the recruiters finally called. "Now the whole world's recruiting him," Heathcote recalls. "But you gotta know Scott-he's a funny guy. He says, ‘Hey, if they didn't want me then, they ain't gonna get me now.' And they didn't."

"I look at this guy with kind of spread out feet, and what looks like kind of a pot stomach," says Jud Heathcote, head coach at Michigan State University. "He's almost an albino, he's so white-and I say, ‘That's Scott Skiles?'" But he had a presence out there, a presence that said he's running the show."

Heathcote did, and Skiles went on to become a first-team All-American and a Big Ten Conference MVP, breaking two of Magic Johnson's Michigan State records. He played with the same cocky, brash, annoying intensity and court savvy that would eventually earn him notoriety as, well, a kind of a jerk. He woofed. He pumped his fists. He berated players. "I think in his senior year he thought he was Elvis," says Rockaway, who today owns a vending business and still sees Skiles often.

"‘Cocky' is a good word [to describe him], but ‘confident' is better," says Heathcote. "Scott always had that great confidence when he had the basketball in his hands. He just knew he could do something positive."

Skiles's most famous basketball moment in college-perhaps in his career-came in a game against Georgetown, when he whipped a no-look, wrap-around-the-body pass to a streaking teammate. "Even to this day, I'll be in an airport and someone will come up to me and that's the first thing they'll bring up," he says. "I had made that pass, and similar passes to that, all my life, all the way back to junior high, but I had never done it on national TV before."

Off the court, his most famous moments made other kinds of headlines. Between August 1984 and November 1985, he was arrested three times-the first, when police discovered cocaine paraphernalia and marijuana in Skiles's car. He initially claimed his roommate had put the drugs in his bag. Later, after a felony cocaine charge was dropped, Skiles pleaded guilty to marijuana possession. Three weeks after that, Skiles was hit with a charge of driving while intoxicated. He pleaded guilty to impaired driving, paid $300 in fines, and landed in jail for three days. Then, just two and a half weeks before the start of his senior basketball season, Skiles was nailed again for driving while intoxicated. He wound up being sentenced to 15 days in jail-to be served after his senior year.

Heathcote came under enormous pressure to suspend Skiles, possibly for his entire senior season. If he did it, Skiles's career was likely over. Skiles himself told Sports Illustrated at the time, "If I had been coach I would have kicked the guy off the team. No questions asked."

While not downplaying the seriousness of the three arrests, Heathcote defended Skiles-and continues to do so. Because of his brashness, "he was a sitting duck for the media," Heathcote says. "They tried to make him out as an ax murderer." The truth, Heathcote insists, was far less sinister. "The athletic director said to suspend him for one game, which I did. But I never lost confidence in him." Today, Heathcote names Skiles and Magic Johnson as the best players he's ever coached.


Next to his March 1996 divorce from his high-school sweetheart and an accompanying custody battle, Skiles recalls the period as the most painful of his life. But he refuses to deflect the blame. "I did what I did," he says. "I paid for it and I deserved it. But it was also an opportunity for me to mature and understand things better. I wasn't doing anything that a lot of other college kids weren't doing. But the fact is, I was a person who was sort of sailing through life, so to speak." As usual, Rick Skiles brooked no self-pity from his son and Scott Skiles didn't shy from coming clean. "At that point, you're busted," he says. "There's no running from it."

During his senior year, opposing fans never let him forget his crimes. They taunted him; one spectator hoisted a sign saying Mothers Against Scott Skiles. At a game at Iowa, according to a 1986 Sports Illustrated article, a vendor hawked programs by saying, "One dollar and fifty cents and you get a list of every offense by Scott Skiles. Cocaine! Marijuana! Drunk driving! It took 12 pages, but we did it!"

The jeering only seemed to motivate him. "I could get very emotional and still play," Skiles tells me. "People thought they could get under my skin, but that's the wrong approach to take. I can appear to be very emotional but my mind is calm."


Seven minutes, 35 seconds left. The score in Phoenix is tied 92-92. Skiles has the combination of players he is looking for on the court. And for a moment, the team is more than merely good. It's great. Ben Wallace gets a tip-in. Luol Deng streaks around Phoenix defenders for a jumper. Hinrich drains a three-pointer. The Bulls coach leaps to his feet.


Skiles says he knew two things back when he was a boy ducking elbows from his father: that he would one day play in the NBA and that one day he would coach there. As with most aspects of his life, he had to overcome skepticism about his lack of size and speed. He did. The 22nd player chosen in the 1986 draft, he played ten seasons-including stints with Milwaukee, Orlando, Washington, Indiana, and Philadelphia. He still holds the single-game assist record, 30, set on December 30, 1990. He ranks among the all-time top five free-throw shooters with a success rate of .889. And in 1990-91, he won the league's Most Improved Player Award. "He's probably the Magic's favorite all-time player," says Magic senior vice president Pat Williams. "When he was here he was diving, banging, crashing, sticking his jaw into everything. He competed ferociously and the fans loved him for it."

To teammates and opponents, however, he could be grating. His postgame tirades as a player for the Magic were legendary. "Oh, God, he was the worst, horrible," says Schmitz, the Orlando Sentinel reporter. "When they lost he would come into the locker room just raging. He would throw shoes, tear off his jersey-stuff was flying everywhere. And they were an expansion team, so they were getting their asses kicked every night."

On the court, Skiles had an equal penchant for tantrums, including the time at practice when he went after Shaquille O'Neal. "He was wrapped around Shaq's waist and Shaq was wailing away. It became like a rugby scrum," recalls David Steele, the Magic's television play-by-play announcer. Skiles fought teammates (he was knocked down by Indiana teammate John Long in a December 1988 fight) and opposing players (a Milwaukee Bucks player knocked him down in a fight that drew Skiles a $3,000 fine). Skiles's reputation got so bad that in December 1988 Sam Smith of the Tribune dubbed him the "point-guard-who-would-be-a-boxer."

While in Orlando, Skiles also experienced what he has called the most difficult time in his life-a very public divorce and custody battle over his children. They're the kinds of deeply personal moments Skiles is loath to discuss, but he unburdened himself to Schmitz in a 1993 article. "I take great pride in being a father," Skiles said. "Now all of a sudden I'm in this huge home by myself, and it's difficult because all [my children's] toys and stuff are still there. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to deal with." Later in the article he added, "Look, I don't want it to be a pity party for Scott Skiles. I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me. These things happen to people who aren't basketball players and in the limelight."

When his skills-and his body-wore down, Skiles landed with a team in Greece, where he was promoted to player-coach after suffering an injury. "It was a lot different over there," he recalls. "They take their basketball very seriously. You have flares going off in the building. There are fights. There's riot cops, seats being pulled out and thrown on the court, people throwing stones at the bus. If you can keep your head there and coach, you can coach anywhere."

Danny Ainge, coach of the Phoenix Suns at the time, agreed. In 1997, he hired Skiles as an assistant. When the team faltered, Ainge stepped down, and in 1999, at age 35, Skiles became the youngest coach in the NBA.

His tough approach worked, at least initially. "He was a good fit to try to tighten the reins a little," says Gugliotta. "His style was a 180-degree difference from Danny." The Suns compiled a 40-22 record after Skiles took over from Ainge and a 51-31 record in Skiles's first full season as head coach. The next year, when the team struggled, however, grumbling began. "I think coming into Phoenix was difficult, because the [pressure on Skiles] was to be a hard-ass, and he naturally is a tough coach," says Schmitz. Adds Gugliotta, "Maybe at that time he amped it up even more than he was used to because of management's desire to change the atmosphere."

Players began to complain that Skiles rubbed them the wrong way. When point guard Jason Kidd, a fan favorite, left in a controversial trade, the grousing grew loud-and public. "I had a great relationship with Jason," Skiles says. "But when he got traded somehow it came out that I was behind it." Skiles insists that was not the case. He says he was in on many of the conversations about the move, and was open to a trade, but did not push for Kidd's exit. "The bottom line is, I was a 37-year-old coach," says Skiles. (Today, he remains one of the NBA's youngest coaches.) "I told [the Colangelo family, who owned the Suns], ‘Hey, guys, I just started this head coaching thing. I'm not sure I'm qualified to make these kind of personnel moves yet.' If I was guilty of anything, it was not going to bat hard enough when I knew it was going down for Jason." The damage, however, was done. "Jason said a couple of things; then all of a sudden all of the veteran players hate Scott," Skiles says.

Shawn Marion, the last remaining Suns player who played for Skiles, and one of the veterans who were rumored to be unhappy, says he harbors no hard feelings. "[Danny] Ainge was a little more laid back. Scott was a little more in your face. He just wanted you to go out and play hard." But, asked if he would play for Skiles again, a smile spreads across Marion's face. "Um," he says.

Not long after the Kidd trade, Bryan Colangelo, the general manager at the time, called Skiles in for a meeting. As Skiles recalls, "He said, ‘Do you think you can get this thing turned around?' And I said, ‘No. This is a dysfunctional team.' In a matter of a couple of hours we made a settlement and kind of mutually agreed to go separate ways."