‘Jordan Rules’ Writer Claims Bulls Teammates Were Happy To See Michael Jordan Dragged And That MJ Denied Horace Grant Food After Bad Games

KNBR – ESPN’s “The Last Dance” documentary recounting the Bulls’ final championship season has the nation riveted, but it’s nothing new for longtime Chicago sportswriter Sam Smith. Smith wrote what is still considered the quintessential book on Jordan and the Bulls with 1992’s “Jordan Rules.”

Smith joined Tolbert, Krueger and Brooks on Wednesday, and was asked if his book caused anger among the Bulls players. Smith said it was actually quite the opposite, and that many of Jordan’s teammates were happy to have Jordan’s dirty laundry aired out for all to see.

“Players would come to me over the years and said, ‘You know what he did? He took Horace [Grant’s] food away on the plane because Horace had a bad game,’” Smith said. “[Michael] told the stewardesses ‘Don’t feed him, he doesn’t deserve to eat.’

“They would tell me stuff like that and they they’d say ‘Why don’t you write this?’ And I would say ‘Well I can’t write it unless you say it.’ I don’t do ‘league sources.’ You can’t do that kind of stuff on these kind of things. ‘If you want to be quoted I’ve got no problem with that.’ ‘No, no, no we can’t say that about Michael Jordan.’”

“I could tell all the revelations that were accumulating over the years were a relief for some of the other players. Like ‘let him take the brunt of some of this for a while.’ Which he did.”

Before the release of ESPN’s The Last Dance documentary, Michael Jordan admitted that the documentary may make him look like a bad guy by the end of it all. But, at least thus far, it doesn’t hold a candle to Sam Smith’s book that was covered in Episode 6 of the documentary. Smith’s book publicly torched what was a mostly pristine public perception of Jordan at the time in 1992 but, based on this interview with Smith on the Tolbert, Krueger and Brooks Show in San Francisco, it seems like there’s even more that he left behind on the cutting room floor.

The tidbit about Michael Jordan denying Horace Grant food after a bad game has picked up a lot of headlines this morning. And there’s no denying that would be quite the alpha male move in the most animal kingdom kind of way to take away whatever charter plane catering that everyone else had.

But it also seems to fit the tone of general passive-aggressive jokes that Jordan seemed to make around the timeframe that we’ve seen in the documentary. He was aggressive-aggressive on the court, whether it be in a game or in practice. But off the court, it seems like he’s all about the subtle undercutting jabs under the guise of joking. I’d have to assume this is more of that than literally attempting to starve the 6-foot-10 goggled power forward.

What stuck out to me more is Smith’s claims that the Bulls players were relieved when the Jordan Rules book revealed some of M.J.’s lesser-known and unflattering personality quirks. The narrative at the time and since then has been that Bulls players were pushed hard but mostly content to be the Supremes to Michael Jordan’s Diana Ross. They won championships, found more longevity in the league and were a part of one of the most legendary dynasties in all of sports.

And if Smith’s claims are correct, despite all that achievement and reaching the apex of a professional athlete’s career multiple times, they’re still just as petty as the average person in an office. They’re basically playing concertos with Mozart every night and yet they’re as catty as someone would be after they find out someone a cubicle over makes 5% more. We all know athletes are human and in some ways this is the most human of all of them, players dragged into historical greatness who just want the world to know that M.J. didn’t kiss their boo boos and maybe withheld a honey bun or grilled cheese on a team charter.

In 2020, these stories from teammates would be on Twitter from Shams Charania and Michael Jordan would be reviled for cyberbullying as Nike puts out press releases about his attendance in an anger management program. But back then? You’d think these guys would be happy just to be on some of the NBA’s greatest teams.

Well, maybe besides Scottie Pippen since his contracted salary was basically whatever food Horace Grant was denied on the plane. He could probably stand to be juuuuust a little upset.