It’s not an unusual phenomenon for players from the same team to fight. Disagreements between the closest of teammates are inevitable and it happens across all major sports around the world. Then again, not every disagreement rises to the level of Michael Jordan giving Steve Kerr the five-knuckle-shuffle back in the Chicago Bulls heyday.
But when a back-up point guard decides to take a swing at the greatest basketball player in history — that’s something you don’t see every day.
As crazy as it may seem, this occurred in the summer of 1995 when the Chicago Bulls’ newly-acquired guard Steve Kerr instigated a fistfight with the team’s franchise player, Michael Jordan, during a training camp scrimmage.
The Last Dance shed light on the events that led to this petty squabble.
Here’s everything you need to know about the infamous Jordan-Kerr dust-up.
Steve Kerr had something to prove
Unlike Jordan, who was destined for greatness since he entered the league, Kerr was pretty much a forgotten journeyman before joining the Bulls that summer.
Thus, the 6-foot-1 guard always played with a massive chip on his shoulder and always had to prove that he belonged in the league.
At 25 years removed from the incident, the now Golden State Warriors head coach could only laugh at his actions at the time:
“I don’t know what the hell I was thinking … It’s Michael Jordan, it’s the greatest player ever, but I was pretty competitive and I kind of played with a chip on my shoulder. I had to or I wouldn’t have made it.”
Tensions were already high
Jordan was hellbent on proving his critics wrong entering the Bulls' 1995 training camp. He made a rather unsuccessful return to basketball the year before after a short tenure with baseball. Although his numbers were good, Jordan failed to lead the Bulls past the Orlando Magic in the 1995 Eastern Conference semis. That marked his first playoff series defeat since 1990.
Jordan, who was already 32 years old at the time, remembered every critic who claimed he was already washed up.
The atmosphere was so heated during that camp as Jordan’s competitive fire grew even hotter than before.
It started with trash talk
Jordan was indeed a cut above the rest in terms of talent of the hardwood. However, he was never the type to simply let his game do the talking for him.
Jordan liked to yap his mouth as much as he loved draining mid-range jumpers. It’s not enough that he’s destroying his defender every possession, he also had to dampen his opponent’s spirit with his words.
Kerr learned that the hard way when they matched up against each other during that scrimmage. He recalled,
“I took exception to something he said. So I was talking back and I don’t think Michael appreciated that.”
Kerr went for the body, MJ went for the head
One look at Jordan and Kerr and you anyone could see that the former would have the upper hand in a fight.
Michael Jordan was a 6-foot-6 chiseled Adonis with a low body-fat percentage, while the unathletic Kerr was deemed as one of the smaller players on the Bulls' roster and in the league.
Although it was Kerr who initiated the tussle, it was Jordan who landed several clean hits to Kerr’s face, leaving him with a nasty black eye.
“We got in the lane and he gave me a forearm shiver to the chest and I pushed him back. And next thing you know, our teammates were pulling him off of me,” Kerr shared.
The one-time 3-point contest champion added that Jordan managed to land more punches before Chicago teammates could separate them. Although he received the short end of the stick, Kerr was proud that he stood his ground against Jordan:
“I knew that if we were in an actual fight he could actually probably kill me if he wanted to … It was more just I’m going to stand up for myself.”
Michael Jordan apologized afterwards
Shortly after cooling off, Jordan acknowledged his mistake and reached out to Kerr personally. Kerr said of this exchange:
“He called me later that day and apologized … In a strange way, it was almost a necessary step in our relationship, in a weird way. And from then on, I think he understood me a lot better and vice versa. And we got along much better and competed together and I think he trusted me more. So it was actually sort of, in the end, it was all good. But we've never talked about it since. To be honest, I don't ever think about it, but I get asked about it because it's a unique [situation].
They talked face to face in the Bulls' practice the next day and let bygones be bygones. It is worth noting that Kerr and Jordan did not have much of a relationship at the time, considering they had only been playing with one another for two months.
The fight drew them closer together
Bulls head coach Phil Jackson was not present during that fight since he was entertaining media obligations. The Zen Master, however, described that violent moment as a turning point for that 95-96 Chicago team.
Kerr felt the same way, adding it was more of a wake-up call for Jordan to tone down his competitiveness a notch and make more of an effort to get to know his teammates better:
“He became, I think, more compassionate to everybody, and definitely to me … He had a different approach than most people and he was such a maniac, the way he would kind of attack the game and the season, that he had to understand that everyone was different and not everyone was as talented as him and not everyone was made up the same way as him.”
The Bulls went on to win 72 games in the regular season capped off by a fourth NBA title at the expense of the Seattle Supersonics.
The following year, Michael Jordan and Steve Kerr hooked up with one of the most amazing plays in NBA Finals history. Kerr drilled a dagger three-pointer to help the Bulls close out the Utah Jazz in Game 6 of the 1997 Finals.
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