There are several stories about Michael Jordan and his greatness. Those are often the ones we see everywhere, how MJ lifted a Chicago Bulls team to the top of the NBA in two three-peats, how he praised his teammates every time he won something, but there is another side of Jordan that got a lot bigger during the final years of his career.
Even though he’s considered the greatest player of all time by a lot of people, Jordan wasn’t always loved by his teammates as he was and is by fans. During his days with the Washington Wizards, MJ wasn’t the favorite player in the locker room. Chris Broussard explained on his “The Odd Couple” podcast how Jordan’s personality damaged his relationship with his teammates at that time.
“I know, I covered the team, I was with the Wizards that year, about the last week or two of Jordan’s career. I wrote for the New York Times a story about his last game. The players were sick of him. I mean they were really weren’t enjoying playing with the great Michael Jordan that most of them grew up idolizing, including [Jerry] Stackhouse,” Broussard said, via TalkBasket.
As Broussard said, Jerry Stackhouse wasn’t so happy about how things were done in D.C. at that time. He recently told in an interview that he wishes he never played with the Wizards and Jordan. Now we learn that such feelings might be part of the whole roster and not only Stackhouse.
Rob Parker, the co-host of the show, also described a situation that perfectly sums up how bad the atmosphere was in that locker room.
“It was a mess. If I remember correctly, didn’t they [Wizards’ players] voted not to give him [Michael Jordan] a birthday present? That’s how petty it had gotten,” Parker said.
It’s not the first time we hear about these stories on Jordan, but they’re getting bigger over the last few days. Still, MJ proved he’s one of the greatest, if not the greatest players of all time. However, the things some of his former teammates say about him give you a lot to think about the type of teammate he was.
After a second return to the league at the beginning of the millennium, Jordan played with the Wizards for two seasons, before retiring definitely for the game. He still showed good flashes of his game during that time, but it looks like the biggest thing he did with the Wizard was pissing off his teammates.
