Luc Longley said in his documentary, “One Giant Leap,” that he didn’t enjoy playing with NBA legend Michael Jordan on the Chicago Bulls.
Longley and Jordan were teammates on the Bulls from 1995-96 to 1997-98.
“I didn’t love MJ,” Longley said. “I thought MJ was difficult and unnecessarily harsh on his teammates and probably on himself. And I think, you know, I just didn’t enjoy being around him that much and that was cool.
“It was cool with MJ and it was cool with me. At the end of the day, we found a way to respect each other on the court and to co-exist and that was cool.”
Jordan and Longley helped the Bulls win three straight NBA championships in 1996, 1997, and 1998.
Jordan, one of the best — if not the best — players in NBA history, averaged 29.6 points, 6.1 rebounds and 4.0 assists from 1995-96 to 1997-98, while Longley put up 9.9 points and 5.5 rebounds per game.
Jordan once refused to pass the ball to Longley despite the natural flow of the offense dictating that the pass be made to him. Bulls head coach Phil Jackson called timeout and advised Jordan to pass to Longley.
However, Jordan didn’t listen to Jackson.
Former Bulls big man Bill Wennington wrote an autobiography, “Tales From the Bulls Hardwood,” back in 2004. In the book, Wennington talked about the game where Jordan didn’t pass the ball to Longley despite Longley being open.
When Jackson called timeout and instructed Jordan to give the ball to Longley, Jordan declined because Longley missed two of his earlier passes.
At a meeting in practice the next day, Jackson once again told Jordan to pass the ball to Longley when the offense’s triggers and actions needed it. Longley and Jordan had an interesting chat at practice that day.
“Michael,” Wennington recalls Longley saying, via Jack M. Silverstein of Substack. “I am trying my hardest.” When Jordan heard Longley say that, he said, “Luc, you are not. You are not catching the ball. If I pass you the ball, you have to catch the ball.”
Jordan was interviewed for Longley’s documentary, while Longley wasn’t interviewed for “The Last Dance.”
Jordan was a demanding teammate. He expected perfection from everyone, coaches included.
MJ explained in “The Last Dance” that winning and leadership had a price and he wasn’t afraid to go to deep lengths to push his teammates to be great.
“I pulled people along when they didn’t wanna be pulled,” Jordan said. “I challenged people when they didn’t wanna be challenged, and I earned that right because my teammates came after me. They didn’t endure all the things that I endured. Once you join the team, you live at a certain standard that I play the game, and I wasn’t gonna take anything less.
“Now, if that means I had to go in and get in your ass a little bit, then I did that. You ask all my teammates; the one thing about Michael Jordan was he never asked me to do something that he didn’t f—ing do. When people see this, they gonna say, ‘Well, he wasn’t really a nice guy. He may have been a tyrant.’ Well, that’s you because you never won anything. I wanted to win, but I wanted them to win and be a part of that as well.
“Look, I don’t have to do this. I’m only doing it because it is who I am. That’s how I played the game. That was my mentality. If you don’t wanna play that way, don’t play that way.”
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