Michael Jordan might be both the greatest trash talker and fiercest competitor we’ve ever seen. A man who doesn’t care what anybody thinks as he balances ruthlessness, pettiness, confidence and wit when he speaks, he’s also among the best quotes in sports history.
With “The Last Dance” having concluded now, here’s a look at the 23 most interesting quotes No. 23 said in the documentary.
If there is a podcasting odd couple, this might be it. Donnovan Bennett and JD Bunkis don’t agree on much, but you’ll agree this is the best Toronto Raptors podcast going.
“I look at him and I say, ‘Depends how bad the [expletive] headache is.’”
Jordan responding to Bulls GM Jerry Krause’s analogy on if he’d be willing to risk taking a pill to cure a headache if one in 10 of the pills in the bottle could kill him.
The point Krause was trying to make is that it wasn’t worth risking the chance Jordan could get hurt returning from injury in his second season.
“Phil put Steve Kerr guarding me. He hauls off and hits me in the chest and I haul off and hit him in the [expletive] eye.”
Jordan infamously got into a fight with Steve Kerr in a practice. A moment that, Jordan said, earned Kerr his respect.
“Oh, I hated him. And that hate carries even to this day.”
Jordan had such a fierce rivalry with Isiah Thomas and the “Bad Boy” Detroit Pistons of the late 1980s that the bitter feelings from those days still persist to even now.
“I felt like Scottie was being selfish.”
Scottie Pippen postponed his off-season surgery to right before the start of the 1997-98 season out of spite for his contract dispute. This would later lead to a trade demand from him, while he was making over $30 million less than Jordan at that time.
“It’s not an equal opportunity offence. That’s [expletive] bullshit.”
The idea of the triangle offence didn’t sit well with Jordan when first heard about it as it was going to be taking the ball out of his hands.
“I wasn’t a Phil Jackson fan when he first came in. He was coming and taking the ball out of my hands.”
Jordan didn’t hold back about his initial feelings about Phil Jackson coming in and replacing Doug Collins as head coach of the Chicago Bulls.
“There were so many times that Tex used to yell at me saying, ‘Move the ball, Move the ball! There is no ‘I’ in team.’ I said, ‘There’s an ‘I’ in win.’”
Assistant coach, and innovator of the triangle offence, Tex Winter trying to get Jordan to play more unselfishly within the new offensive scheme he and Jackson were trying to implement.
“Clyde was a threat, I’m not saying he wasn’t a threat. But being compared to him? I took offence to that.”
Coming into the 1992 NBA Finals against the Portland Trail Blazers, Jordan was heavily compared to Clyde Drexler. While he respected Drexler, Jordan thought he was the clearly superior player and used those comparisons as motivation to beat Drexler and win his second title.
“I knew Jerry Krause loved Dan Majerle. Just because Krause liked him was enough for me. You think he’s a great defensive player? OK, fine. I’m going to show you that he’s not.”
Facing the Phoenix Suns in the 1993 Finals and looking to win his third straight championship, Jordan used his contentious relationship with Krause as fuel to help him go out and prove him wrong.
“I was a little but upset I didn’t get the MVP that year and they gave it to Charles Barkley. OK, you can have that I’m going to get this.”
The 1993 MVP selection of Charles Barkley also proved to add extra lighter fuel underneath Jordan’s competitive fire in the 1993 Finals.
“They had Craig Ehlo on me at the time. Which, in all honesty, was a mistake.”
Jordan on his famous game winner in Game 5 of the Bulls’ first-round playoff series against the Cleveland Cavliers, marking the first time Jordan had advanced past the first round of the post-season. In the documentary, Ron Harper, who played for Cleveland at the time, claims he wanted to take Jordan, but Craig Ehlo got the assignment instead.
“I didn’t win without Scottie Pippen, and that’s why I consider him my best teammate of all time. He helped me so much in the way I approached the game, in the way I played the game. Whenever they speak Michael Jordan, they should speak Scottie Pippen.”
Though he criticized him at times in the documentary, Jordan made known how important Pippen was to his career as well.
“When Scottie was out Dennis was a model citizen to the point it was driving him [expletive] insane. So, when Scottie came back Dennis wanted to take a vacation. I come to practice, Phil calls me in and says Dennis wants to tell you something. When Dennis wants to tell me something, I knew it’s not something that I didn’t [expletive] want to hear.”
Jordan’s thoughts going into the meeting where Phil Jackson details Dennis Rodman’s need for a mid-season vacation in 1998.
“Phil, you let this dude go on vacation we’re not going to see him. You let this dude go to Vegas we’re definitely not going to see him.”
Jordan was rather skeptical about allowing Rodman to leave the team to go to Las Vegas for 48 hours for his mid-season vacation.
“I couldn’t take those shoes off fast enough and when I did my socks were soaked in blood.”
In what he thought would be his final game in Madison Square Garden. Jordan wore his original Air Jordan sneakers that were multiple sizes too small for his feet at that point.
“If I had to do it all over again there is no way I’d want to be considered a role model. It’s like a game that’s stacked against me. There’s no way I can win.”
The pressure to live up to his picture-perfect “Like Mike” persona weighed heavily on Jordan.
“I didn’t contribute to that. That was Horace. He was telling everything that was happening within the group.”
Horace Grant allegedly leaked information about the team to author Sam Smith for his book “The Jordan Rules.”
“I don’t have a gambling problem I have a competitiveness problem.”
Despite the noise in regards to the matter, Jordan emphatically dismissed the assertion he’s addicted to gambling in the documentary.
“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.”
During his career Jordan held himself to very high standards and, in turn, held his teammates to the same standards.
“Every time I went in the [expletive] game I came out with a new scratch. It became personal with me.”
The physical toil the Indiana Pacers subjected Jordan and the Bulls to in the 1998 Eastern Conference Finals only served to further Jordan to once again reach his third straight Finals.
“Why would I think about missing a shot I haven’t taken?”
Known for his late-game heroics, Jordan revealed some of his mentality in those clutch situations and why, more often than not, it ended in glory for him.
Everybody says I pushed off. [Expletive]. His energy was going that way. I didn’t have to push him that way.”
Jordan addressing his famous “last shot” against Byron Russell and the Utah Jazz in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals.
“It’s maddening because I think we could’ve won seven. I really believe that. We may not have, but man, to not be able to try, that’s something that I just can’t accept. For whatever reason I just can’t accept it.”
Jordan still has bitter feeling about his Bulls team being broken up by management after winning six titles in eight years, believing they could’ve chased at least one more before the end of the millennium.
GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.
The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.
Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.
In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.
The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.
With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.
Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.
Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.
He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.
The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.
Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.
He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.
George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.
Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.
In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.
St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.
ON DECK
Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.
The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps have loaned midfielder Jay Herdman to Cavalry FC of the Canadian Premier League and rewarded two Whitecaps FC 2 players with MLS contracts.
Midfielder Jeevan Badwal signed as a homegrown player through 2027, with options for 2028 and 2029, while forward Nicolas Fleuriau Chateau signed an MLS contract through 2025, with club options for 2026 and 2027.
Both have been playing for the Whitecaps’ MLS Next Pro team along with the 20-year-old Herdman, the son of Toronto FC coach John Herdman.
The moves were made before Friday’s MLS and CPL roster freeze.
Born in New Zealand while his father was working for the New Zealand Football Federation, Jay Herdman was also part of the New Zealand soccer team at the Paris Olympics with three appearances including two starts. Herdman’s loan deal runs through the end of the CPL season.
“Jay is an important signing for us, who will provide another attacking option for the run-in,” Cavalry coach and GM Tommy Wheeldon Jr. said in a statement. “He’s a player that we’ve been tracking since we played against Whitecaps in pre-season and he has very good quality, with terrific energy and the ability to contribute to goals.
“With the recent injury to Mael Henry, Jay’s positional profile and age helps us with on-field options and minutes that count towards the league’s required 2,000 U-21 domestic minutes during the regular season.”
Badwal, an 18-year-old from suburban Surrey, is the 26th academy player to sign an MLS contract with the Whitecaps.
“Having joined our academy in 2019, Jeevan continues to progress through our club and takes every challenge in stride,” Whitecaps FC sporting director Axel Schuster said in a statement. “He is comfortable on the ball, positionally sound, and does the simple things very well. We are excited for Jeevan to make the next step in his young career.”
Badwal has made 19 appearances with Whitecaps 2 this season, scoring two goals and adding three assists. A Canadian youth international, he started all three matches for Canada at the 2023 FIFA U-17 World Cup
Badwal made his first-team debut off the bench in the first leg of the Canadian Championship semifinal against Pacific FC.
Chateau was originally selected 74th overall by the Whitecaps in the 2024 MLS SuperDraft after spending two years at St. John’s University.
The 22-year-old from Ottawa signed an MLS NEXT Pro contract with Whitecaps FC 2 in March. He leads Whitecaps FC 2 in goal-scoring this season with eight goals across 21 appearances (including eight starts).
“Nicolas leads MLS NEXT Pro in shots on target, has a very strong work rate and willpower. We are looking forward to seeing his growth as he builds on his young professional career,” said Schuster.
Chateau made his first-team debut as a second-half substitute at CF Montreal on July 6.
Herdman, who joined the Whitecaps academy as a 13-year-old, has made 19 appearances for Whitecaps FC 2 in 2024, scoring six goals and adding three assists. He made his MLS debut in April as a second-half substitute in a 2-0 victory at the Seattle Sounders.
Internationally, Herdman has represented New Zealand 29 times across the U-19, U-20, and U-23 sides. He was part of New Zealand’s squad at the 2023 FIFA U-20 World Cup, starting three matches at the tournament and scoring against Uzbekistan.
The Whitecaps host San Jose on Saturday while Cavalry entertains Atletico Ottawa on Sunday.
—
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024
