Michael Jordan was not the nicest guy, but that was never his goal. He cared about only one thing: winning, and he did that better than few other athletes in history. The price of winning sometimes was being a jerk to his teammates, but Jordan didn’t care.
During episode 7 of “The Last Dance” documentary that aired on ESPN Sunday night, Jordan defended his controversial leadership style.
“My mentality was to go out and win. . . at any cost. If you don’t want to live that regimented mentality, then you don’t need to be alongside of me, because I’m going to ridicule you until you get on the same level with me. And if you don’t get on the same level, then it’s going to be hell for you,” Jordan said of his leadership.
Jordan’s former Chicago Bulls teammates acknowledged how tough it was to play with him.
“People were afraid of him. We were his teammates and we were afraid of him! There was just fear. The fear factor of MJ was so thick,” Jud Buechler said in the documentary.
“Let’s not get it wrong. He was an a–hole, he was a jerk. He crossed the line numerous times. But as time goes on, you think back about what he was trying to accomplish? Yeah, he was a hell of a teammate,” said former Bulls center Will Perdue.
Former Bulls center Bill Wennington felt similarly but understood the goal.
“He was pushing us all to be better because he wanted to win. And guess what? It worked,” said Wennington.
Jordan recognized that the documentary showing this side of him would make him look bad. Even Phil Jackson said he had to tell Jordan to tone it down sometimes and make amends with his teammates. But this approach worked because as Jordan says, he never asked his teammates to do anything he didn’t do himself. It also didn’t hurt that he had Scottie Pippen playing the role of good cop to his bad cop.
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