When it comes to stunning Michael Jordan, nobody in the business does it better than Fox Sports analyst Skip Bayless. For the past few years, nobody has defended MJ’s GOAT status louder than Mr. Bayless, who isn’t afraid to express his feelings live on the air of Undisputed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d8QmTxrNtU
Needless to say, Skip has made his opinion very much clear. But in a rather unfortunate turn of events for the television media star, an old article got dug up that may prove his feelings about MJ weren’t always so concrete.
During the summer of 2018, Skip sent out a tweet basically saying how Jordan would never look tired in a basketball game — unlike LeBron who, apparently, looked that way in Game 2 of that year’s Finals.
The NBA community did some investigating and found an article written by Skip in ’98 that literally accused MJ of being tired.
#NeverForget pic.twitter.com/ynR4F24S0q
— Freezing Cold Takes (@OldTakesExposed) April 19, 2020
Here is an excerpt straight from the article, which came just days after Chicago’s Game 5 loss against the Utah Jazz in the 1998 Finals.
“This will be remembered as the night Michael was mortal. This was his night, his game, his fourth quarter, and Michael Jordan got tired. No. 23 tried and No. 23 failed. With the world waiting to watch him puff his victory cigar, he and his Bulls got smoked by Karl Malone.
He and his man Scottie Pippen were colder than the champagne chilling all over Chicago. These two went from battling for Finals MVP to vying for least valuable, shot for missed shot. When it mattered, these two failed to feed the one Bull as hot as Utah’s Malone–Toni Kukoc. But you really couldn’t blame them. This was Michael time, and Michael shot 9 for 26 in what could have been his last home game.
This was so un-Michael. If you’re looking for a positive, perhaps it’s that Michael Jeffrey Jordan won’t be able to live with letting Friday night’s failure stand as his last game at the house he built.”
Yeah, those are pretty harsh words by Skip. But let it serve as a reminder that every NBA star, no matter how good, has bad days. Not even Jordan was perfect in the Finals and he had occasional poor performances just like everyone else.
We don’t blame Skip for not remembering the words that he himself spoke so many years ago. We do, however, blame him for making it seem as though Jordan never had the moments that every player has had.
Michale Jordan was an enigma and he may be the GOAT — but he also made mistakes. Perhaps 90s Skip should remind today’s Skip of that very important idea.
