Horace Grant was teammates with Michael Jordan on the Chicago Bulls for six seasons and got to witness his love for gambling firsthand. Jordan especially loved playing high-stakes poker games, and Grant spoke about lending him money for it during a plane ride on an episode of Legends in Session with Horace Grant.
“We were playing some poker,” Grant said. “And he asked me, he was like, ‘Loan me a stack.’ I’m like, ‘Sure, s*** this is Michael Jordan.’… And start playing poker again… He lose that, he was like, ‘Can I borrow another one?’ I’m like, ‘Hell yeah,’ That’s another stack. And by the time he lose that, we’re landing. And just to mess with him, I said, ‘Yo, MJ, make sure you have my money in the morning.’
“And I had never seen him that mad in a long time,” Jordan stated. “Just the mere fact that I said out loud… And he was there way before everybody was there. And when I walk in, he had two stacks of crispy $100 bills. And instead of just giving to me, he threw them at me.”
You can’t blame Jordan for getting offended by Grant saying that out loud. Saying it in person probably wouldn’t have gone down all too well either. Grant was just trying to cause a stir and succeeded. It perhaps isn’t all too surprising that these two weren’t the best of friends despite having so much success together.
The Bulls had drafted Jordan with the third pick in the 1984 NBA Draft, and he became a superstar right away. He didn’t have much help around him his first few years in the league, though, but then came the 1987 NBA Draft. The Bulls landed Grant with the 10th pick and also acquired Scottie Pippen, who was the seventh pick.
Together, this trio would lead the Bulls to the Promised Land. They won their first championship together in 1991, but the winning didn’t stop there. The next two years would see them win two more titles as they pulled off a historic three-peat.
Jordan then stunned the basketball world by retiring in 1993. He returned in 1995, but Grant was no longer on the team by then. He signed with the Orlando Magic in 1994 and actually helped hand Jordan his only playoff series defeat post 1990. The Magic beat the Bulls in the Eastern Conference Semifinals in 1995 in six games, and then went on to lose to the Houston Rockets in the NBA Finals.
Jordan and the Bulls would get their revenge the following year by sweeping the Magic in the 1996 Eastern Conference Finals. They would end up three-peating again from 1996 to 1998.
Grant would never come close to winning a championship again with the Magic, but would win his fourth with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2001. He’d retire in 2004 with career averages of 11.2 points, 8.1 rebounds, 2.2 assists, 1.0 steals, and 1.0 blocks per game.
