Dennis Rodman landed in Chicago after an overwhelming stint with the San Antonio Spurs in the middle of the 90s. The power forward wasn’t having the best time in the league, but the Bulls took advantage of his character and fierceness on the court to win their second three-peat during that decade.
One of the most curious facts about that team was that Rodman never spoke off the court with the biggest stars of the team, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. During a recent interview with ‘Pardon My Take’, Rodman explained why he never approached MJ or Pippen outside of the hardwoods.
Rodman explained he was the piece the team was missing to win again, and that worked for him since he never spoke to Jordan or Pippen off the court.
“Michael was the scorer, Scottie was Robin, I was the guy that picked up the slack, all the dirty work. We complimented each other very well,” he said.
“I was the missing piece and it was funny the fact that we never talked to each other. All the time we talked it was all on the court. Off the court, we never talked to each other. (…) If you see tape of us playing back in the day, we never really bitched at each other at all. It’s more like we were so mad at each other because we couldn’t perform that night.”
Just like Rodman notes, they didn’t need to be the best of friends to perform well on the court. They knew they had to do their respective jobs and that was it. If you want to know how that worked out for them, the trio won three straight titles, making the Bulls the biggest force in the league.
