Michael Jordan is widely considered the best player to ever lace them up in an NBA hardwood. Best teammate? Well, that's a whole different story, as highlighted by The Last Dance docuseries airing on ESPN.
As The Last Dance has shown thus far, Jordan had a knack for irritating some of his teammates — and Horace Grant was among the ones who got the bulk of that treatment.
During an appearance on KNBR’s Tolbert, Krueger, and Brooks podcast, longtime Chicago Bulls beat writer and columnist Sam Smith dropped a juicy nugget of Bulls' lore, noting some of Jordan's airborne antics off the court:
“Players would come to me over the years and said, ‘You know what he did? He took Horace’s food away on the plane because Horace had a bad game,’” said Smith. “[Michael] told the stewardesses ‘Don’t feed him, he doesn’t deserve to eat.’”
This is unheard of stuff by anyone familiar with the Bulls, but Smith soon revealed why this information was kept confidential for more than 20 years.
“They would tell me stuff like that and they’d say ‘Why don’t you write this?’” said Smith. “And I would say ‘Well I can’t write it unless you say it.’ I don’t do ‘league sources.’ You can’t do that kind of stuff on these kind of things. ‘If you want to be quoted I’ve got no problem with that.’ ‘No, no, no we can’t say that about Michael Jordan.’”
Smith's journalistic integrity is to be admired, even if the gossip is too juicy to miss. Yet this also speaks to how intimidating a star Jordan was, as some of his teammates and staff members could lose their job for daring to call out His Airness. In part, this is why The Last Dance is the most interesting thing on television at the moment.
Follow Us
Subscribe