The Life and Times of a Basketball Lifer

I grew up watching the Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers. They were my team the moment I saw Magic Johnson leading a fastbreak and dishing off to James Worthy, Byron Scott and/or Michael Cooper. The team in “Forum Blue and Gold” got my attention when I first started watching basketball in the late 1980s and they still hold sway in this era of Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol. Yet despite that Laker-love, my many relatives in Chicago began converting me to the then-hapless Chicago Bulls in 1985 when a rookie by the name of Michael Jordan took to the air in the Windy City.

Imagine then my excitement to actually shake hands and interview one of MJ’s own teammates from the first Bulls’ championship, point guard BJ Armstrong. In town to promote the Junior NBA program of the league, I was fortunate enough to be able to talk to the former 11-year NBA veteran thanks to global NBA sponsor Gatorade and got some insights into how special those Bulls championships were. “This is basketball heaven right here!” BJ said of the Philippines, reveling in the love that’s been thrown his way by a nation of people with non-stop hoop dreams.

Benjamin Roy “BJ” Armstrong, Jr. was the eighteenth pick in the 1989 NBA draft out of the University of Iowa. In just his second year, the Bulls climbed to the top of the mountain and won the NBA Championship. He was part of the first Chicago “Three-peat” team, emerging as the starter in the 1992-1993 season when he was the league’s three-point field goal percentage leader. In the wake of Jordan’s first retirement, he became an All-Star in 1994. He was the Toronto Raptors’ first pick in the 1995 NBA expansion draft and eventually played for the Golden State Warriors, Charlotte Hornets and Orlando Magic before winding up his career back where he started, in Chi-Town, in the 1999-2000 season.

Asked what it was like to play alongside Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant and those famed Bulls teams, BJ shared that he didn’t really think about that until after he had retired from the NBA. “At that point,” he said, “Michael wasn’t ‘Michael’, Scottie wasn’t ‘Scottie’, and BJ wasn’t ‘BJ’. We were just a young team trying to learn how to beat the Celtics.” He further elaborated that the Bulls were too busy playing basketball and living in the moment that they had no inkling that they were making history. Acknowledging that the Detroit Pistons were at the top of the NBA in the late 1980s, BJ said that all of their efforts were directed towards coming together and working as a team to dethrone the Pistons and win their first title.

A self-proclaimed “basketball lifer”, Armstrong had been playing basketball since he was a kid in Detroit and remains involved in the game even after his NBA career has ended. Spending one year working for ESPN’s NBA Fastbreak show, he then worked as Assistant General Manager for the Bulls and is now involved in sports management with the Wasserman Media Group. In fact, he’s the agent for the Bulls’ new superstar, Derrick Rose.

He shared a funny story wherein he and Michael Jordan caught an NBA game just a few weeks ago. BJ and “the greatest player to ever put on a pair of sneakers” looked at each other and realized that they were having fun just watching an NBA game now that they were both retired from the league. BJ added that Michael basically “had to buy a team” so he could experience being a fan again, referring to Jordan’s purchase of the Charlotte Bobcats. He noted that Jordan is an NBA lifer like he is, so much so that during Jordan’s first retirement, BJ said “he was calling me everyday anyway, talking about the game, going over scouting reports.” He concluded that Jordan “will be involved in basketball his entire life. That’s who he is.”

Recalling how his first NBA coach is now the coach with most NBA Championships with ten (and counting), BJ said that he was very lucky to play for Phil Jackson. “We came in together,” BJ recalls of Jackson, “He was just a rookie coach in my rookie year and Michael Jordan was a young player, Scottie Pippen was in his second year so it was just a matter of all of us there, at the right place, at the right time.” He added, “our personalities meshed, we won a few games along the way, and before you knew it, we were crowned champions. I’d love to think we knew what we were doing, but we didn’t. We were just young kids.”

On their way to building their dynasty, the Bulls had memorable rivalries with the Pistons and the New York Knicks. Even as I asked BJ why rivalries don’t seem to exist in today’s NBA, he thinks it’s because of the high turnover of players in the current game. “The fans in particular don’t really have a chance to grow with that group,” he lamented. “There’s no attachment with the team because the teams are always changing.” He goes on to note that, “very rarely do you see teams stick together now for 4-5 years. Every offseason, you juggle your lineup.” In his generation, Armstrong relates that team executives would let guys grow together and see if they develop over the course of 6-7 years. With all the wheeling and dealing in the NBA though, BJ said that in the end, “the best players always find a way to have their team in a position to win.”

Since BJ is still involved with the NBA and now with management of athletes, it was only natural to ask him about the possibility of a Filipino getting drafted by an NBA team. Without skipping a beat, Armstrong said that sometimes, you just need the opportunity to make that impact. “At some point, the stars are gonna line up, someone is gonna believe in you, which will then inspire you to believe in yourself,” he declared. When fellow blogger Eddie Ching asked him about the possibility of the Bulls drafting former Ateneo Blue Eagle team captain Chris Tiu, BJ smiled at Eddie and said “I like the way this guy thinks!” Ching added that Tiu doesn’t even have to be signed, just drafted, and that adidas could just make jerseys in the Bulls’ famous red and black with “Tiu” and “17” emblazoned on it. “Instantly, you’d sell 100,000 jerseys overnight,” he excitedly told the former All-Star. Armstrong the businessman then half-jokingly told Ching “Let’s talk later!”

Clearly, basketball has been very good to BJ Armstrong. From his roots in suburban Detroit to his days in the Big 10 Conference playing for the University of Iowa, to the championship days with the Chicago Bulls, all the way to his current stint as a player agent, he’s come full circle. From learning the game to now being a teacher and mentor to a new generation of players. Noting that he doesn’t know anywhere else in the world where basketball is loved like it’s loved here in the Philippines, BJ Armstrong looked as comfortable here as he did shooting threes in the old Chicago Stadium. He looked like he was at home.

Thanks to Gatorade, Mr. Ton Gatmaitan and Mr. Rick Olivares for this interview.