Michael Jordan’s treatment of his teammates came into focus over the weekend after the airing of the latest episodes of “The Last Dance.” Jordan knew that the documentary would make him look bad in this regard, and to some extent, he was right. Some feel Jordan’s treatment of his teammates was unnecessarily harsh, while others believe it was the price of winning.
Charles Barkley believes that results aside, Jordan was selective about whom he picked on. The answer came in response to a question about how Barkley would have felt being Jordan’s teammate.
“You know he has selective prosecution over there, right? He knows who to pick on,” Barkley said during an interview with Dan Le Batard Monday. “Michael is awesome, but there’s certain guys you can’t treat like that. You have to know what guys you can treat badly and they’re gonna accept it. Screaming at guys all the time and punching guys? Come on, man. there’s certain guys that would whoop the hell out of you if you tried doing that. He has selective prosecution. I mean, Scott Burrell and Steve Kerr. I mean, come on, man.”
This is definitely another way of looking at things. Maybe Jordan did pick on guys he knew he could. But maybe Jordan’s argument would be that he picked on the guys he knew needed to be picked on in order to toughen them up for competition.
You can’t argue with Jordan’s results — the six championships say it all. But some of the stories about the way MJ treated his teammates really are ugly.
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