Who Is Tim Floyd?

Lee Floyd lived with constant pain. Osteoarthritis, it was called, but all young Tim Floyd knew was that his father, the basketball coach at Southern Mississippi, popped a lot of aspirin and that when Lee wanted to talk to a player sitting next to him on the bench, he had to turn his entire body because it hurl too much to turn his head.

It must have been maddening for someone whose body had served him as well as Lee Floyd's had. He was a strapping man, 6'3", 205 pounds, a former boxer, football player, gymnast and swimmer, and before going into the Navy during World War II he played with the Phillips 66ers, a top AAU team. It was while stationed at Pensacola Naval Air Station that Lee broke his back in a trampoline accident, an injury that led to the osteoarthritis. Yet Tim never heard his father utter a single word of complaint about his condition, even toward the end, when the arthritis left him bent at the waist and so severely limited his motion that he could barely walk. Tim was a sophomore at Southern Miss, when Lee, now retired, took a bad fall that left him paralyzed from the waist up. After eight weeks in a hospital, Lee died of heart failure at 52. "That's why Tim feels he shouldn't complain about things," says his wife, Beverly. "Not when you've seen a man go through that much pain for so long without saying anything."

As the new coach of the Chicago Bulls—and make no mistake, though he was introduced last week as the team's director of basketball operations, Tim Floyd is the coach of the Bulls now—Floyd may be remembered as the man whose arrival helped seal Michael Jordan's decision not to return to the team. Floyd's every move will be dissected by a Chicago public that isn't quite sure whether to view him as a coach or a co-conspirator in the departure of Phil Jackson, the Bulls' revered coach. The widespread belief is that Floyd's hiring, at the behest of Bulls general manager Jerry Krause, an acquaintance for nine years, has been a fait accompli for months.

Regardless of whether the 44-year-old Floyd helped orchestrate what is becoming the probable breakup of the Bulls or whether he is merely a pawn in the game being played by Krause and owner Jerry Reinsdorf, there is no question that he is now in a uniquely difficult position. It has been distressing at times, being portrayed as little more than Krause's fishing buddy by some or a behind-the-scenes schemer by others, but you get the feeling that a little pain, or even a lot, isn't going to send Lee Floyd's boy running for cover.

Lately Tim's life has been chopped into bite-sized pieces for public consumption: son of a coach; undistinguished playing career at Southern Miss and Louisiana Tech; in '76 sends letters to Don Haskins at UTEP, Bob Knight at Indiana and Ralph Miller at Oregon State, looking for a coaching job; Haskins, the only one to write back, hires him; after nine years under Haskins, lands head job at Idaho, then moves on to coach New Orleans and Iowa State; combined college record of 243-130, with six NCAA tournament appearances in 12 seasons; takes moderately talented teams at all three stops and wins big by teaching man-to-man pressure defense and transferring his white-hot intensity to his players.

The file makes him sound driven, single-minded, ambitious, and he is all of those things, but not only those things. In the unlikely event that Jordan, who has said he will retire rather than play for any coach other than Jackson, ever gets to know Floyd well, he will probably like him. Most everyone does. He has a way, a good recruiter's way, of endearing himself to people. His first day on the job at New Orleans, he arrived with a vase full of flowers for his new secretary. He is godfather to the daughter of one of his former New Orleans players, Willie Richardson.

Born in El Paso and raised in Hattiesburg, Miss., Floyd is part good ol' boy, part Southern gentleman and completely unpretentious. When he was hired at Iowa State before the 1994-95 season, his contract included the use of a car, and Floyd asked for a pickup truck. School administrators didn't think that would project the right image, so they arranged for him to have a Lincoln Town Car. "He hated it," says his longtime friend, Chicago businessman Dave Mann.

Floyd is tactful, which should serve him well in Chicago. When he was recruiting for UTEP in the '70s, he took Haskins to the Windy City to show him a high school player named Jerry Jones. Floyd tried to prepare his gruff, old-school boss for the fact that Jones had his name tattooed on his arm. "Well, let's just turn around and go back to the airport," Haskins said. "We don't need a guy like that on our team."

"It's barely recognizable, Coach," Floyd said. "We're here. We might as well go in. Maybe we'll see someone else we like." That night Jones blocked shots at one end of the court and dunked at the other, and Haskins fell silent. Later, he and Floyd headed back to the airport. "So, what did you think of that tattoo on Jerry's arm?" Floyd asked.

"Hell," said Haskins. "I never even noticed it."