On the latest episode of NBA stars Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart’s Roommates Show, New York Knicks icon Patrick Ewing spoke about his experience filming Space Jam with Michael Jordan in 1995. The Hall of Famer revealed that being on a movie set did not stop the Chicago Bulls superstar from talking trash to his peers. On the contrary, Jordan felt more emboldened to talk smack.
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Per Ewing, he, Charles Barkley, Larry Johnson, Muggsy Bogues, and Shawn Bradley, spent a month with Jordan in LA filming their scenes for the 1996 movie. Once they wrapped up for the day, they would play pickup games in the ‘Jordan Dome,’ a state-of-the-art basketball facility that Warner Bros. built for the Bulls icon to train in between scenes.
Ewing claimed that during the pickup games, Jordan would forget that he’s retired and resort to talking trash to him and Barkley. He said,
“Michael is one of the biggest trash-talkers that you ever had the opportunity to meet or play against. He was always riding Charles [Barkley] and myself that we hadn’t won anything as yet. But it was a great experience. I enjoyed the opportunity to be around those guys and learning from those guys.”
While Ewing and Barkley treated the pickup games as an excellent way to have fun as they shot their part in the film, Jordan used them to study his peers and get in shape for the 1995-96 NBA season. His plan would work to perfection, as the Bulls superstar would go on to win his fourth MVP award and lead Chicago to another NBA title.
En route to the Championship, MJ would also beat his Space Jam co-star, Pat Ewing and his Knicks in the playoffs. The Knicks icon’s small role in the movie played a massive role in helping Jordan find the mojo that he was missing after his return from retirement just months before they began filming.
Patrick Ewing’s horrendous playoff record against Michael Jordan
During Patrick Ewing’s Hall of Fame career, he faced the Bulls six times in the playoffs. He and the Knicks lost five times and registered only one series win over Chicago. However, Ewing and New York’s only playoff success against their arch-nemesis came in 1994, when Jordan was retired from the NBA.
They had the chance to prove that their 1994 series win was no fluke when they met again in the 1996 playoffs. But Jordan and the Bulls won the series 4-0 to cement the fact that the five-time MVP’s absence was the only reason the Knicks upstaged them in 1994. The 1996 series was the last time Jordan and Ewing faced each other in the playoffs.
They retired with MJ leading 5-0 in the playoff battles against Ewing. To this day, Jordan uses his unbeaten record against the Knicks in the playoffs to roast Ewing.
During an interview with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols, the retired center once said,
“He’s [MJ] been talking trash from the first day I met him and he’s still continued to talk trash, telling me that I’ve never beaten him when it counted.”
Ewing is friends with Jordan and withstands his trash-talking like a good sport. But it undoubtedly hurts him that he couldn’t upstage Jordan and the Bulls and win at least one ring during his Hall of Fame career.
