The biggest obstacle Michael Jordan faced after making it to the NBA in 1984 was beating the Detroit ‘Bad Boy’ Pistons in the Playoffs between 1988 and 1990. ‘His Airness’ finally did overcome it in 1991, when the Chicago Bulls beat the dirtiest team in the sport and did so with a broomstick. They swept Isiah Thomas and Co in the Eastern Conference Finals. And for Jordan, it was overcoming “evil”.
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Jordan couldn’t get past the 1st round of the Playoffs in his first 3 years in the league. He was desperate to win a championship after winning the MVP and DPOY in 1987 and then (again) failing to get past Larry Bird’s Celtics. But for the next 3 years, the Pistons wouldn’t let the Bulls get through and win 2 championships themselves while doing so.
Michael was sick of getting beat (both physically and in basketball), at the hands of Thomas, Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman, Bill Laimbeer, and other Bad Boys. He started to hate them so much, that he believed them to be evil even after getting his revenge.
Michael Jordan felt “good overrode evil” after finally beating the Pistons in 1991
In a Playboy magazine interview in 1992, more than a year after he eliminated the Pistons from the ECF, Michael Jordan reminisced when Zeke and his team walked out on the Bulls without shaking hands.
Following is the excerpt of the same from the interview Jordan did.
Jordan: That’s why they walked off the court. We embarrassed them. To sweep them four zip, it was embarrassing. Defending champions, embarrassing. It was like good overriding evil.
Playboy: What do you mean by “evil”?
Jordan: It was their style of basketball. If you knock a person down on a hard foul, you pick that man up and say, “Are you all right?” The Pistons will knock you down, then, if possible, kick you. They try to use that crap as an intimidator. The evil came out of their attitude, the unsportsmanlike actions. That bad-boy image brought them some gold, but it also brought them a lot of shame.
MJ was not saying it because he was hurt by what the Pistons used to do to him and his teammates.
The then Pistons head coach Chuck Daly had designed ‘Jordan Rules’ in 1988 after MJ’s 56-point game, which meant for every Piston, “to play him [Jordan] tough, to physically challenge him and to vary its defenses so as to try to throw him off balance.”
For the rest of the 88′ Playoffs games against the Bulls, and two more Playoffs to come, the Pistons tried to beat the life out of Jordan whenever he drove to the basket.
Dennis Rodman was a big part of what the Pistons did. And yet, a few years later Jordan wanted him by his side.
Jordan recruited Dennis Rodman to the Bulls himself
Already a 3x NBA champ, MJ forgot all his beliefs of Rodman being a dirty player when he came back to the NBA just before the 1995 Playoffs and tasted defeat once again, this time at the hands of a young Shaquille O’Neal.
Phil Jackson proposed his wish to bring Dennis to Chicago in the 1995 off-season. The trio of head coach Jackson, Jordan, and Scottie Pippen, all convinced ‘The Worm’ to bring his talents to the Bulls from the Spurs.
The 7x rebounding champion couldn’t refuse the offer from three legends of the game, and the rest, as we all know is history.
