Dennis Rodman was quite the specialist player when out on NBA hardwood. He would have a multitude of games where he would score 0 points but his presence out on the floor would be the difference between winning and losing for the team that he was playing for.
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Defense and rebounding was what ‘The Worm’ excelled in and he made sure to make his bank by being one of the league’s best at it for over a decade. Despite his off-court shenanigans, Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Scottie Pippen all believed that they could use him on a Chicago Bulls team that was already a title contender.
Clearly, adding Rodman worked. The Bulls went on to win 3 straight championships and a mid-December game against the Los Angeles Lakers during the 1996-97 season proved just how valuable he was.
Dennis Rodman held Shaquille O’Neal to 0 points in a half
The Lakers visited the defending champion, Bulls, in Chicago on December 17th, 1996 in their first year of having both Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant. By halftime, Shaq had already racked up 23 points on 10-15 shooting from the field.
The Bulls didn’t have anybody his size they could reasonably throw at ‘The Big Aristotle’ to slow him down. In the second half, Bill Wennington would start off the second half guarding O’Neal and considering the fact that he gave up 8 points in the first half to him, it was expected that he would give up more. And he did.
Wennington gave up 4 more points to him but Phil Jackson would then make the adjustment of putting Dennis Rodman on Shaq. This changed the course of the game as the Lakers center would remain scoreless for the duration of the game. Despite it going into OT, O’Neal couldn’t seem to find his groove and get aggressive offensively.
Dennis Rodman loved defending Shaquille O’Neal
Despite a 10-32 shooting night from Michael Jordan, Chicago came out on top 129-123 in overtime. This was in large part due to Dennis Rodman taking up the challenge of guarding somebody who was half a foot taller than him and more than holding his own.
In his on-court postgame interview, he would go on to talk about how he felt holding Shaq to such a low scoring half+OT. It should also be noted that Rodman only gave up 4 points to Shaq in the limited minutes he spent guarding him in the first half of this game.
