“This Michael Jordan play makes me sick, I need you to knock him down”: How Pat Riley berated the Knicks for befriending the Bulls legend during their Playoff matchups

Pat Riley played a video of Michael Jordan dunking on his Knicks over and over again to his players to help motivate them. 

With Chris Herring’s ‘Blood in the Garden’ having been released, several tidbits from the New York Knicks’ battles against Michael Jordan have been surfacing. The Knicks’ faced off against the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s in 5 postseasons, with the latter winning all but one of those meetings. 

If we were to go back merely a year, it shows how the Bulls had actually beaten the Knicks in the Playoffs 4 straight years from ‘89-’93, with them getting their big break in ‘94 with Michael Jordan having been retired from the NBA. 

The most grueling of these series would most definitely be the 1992 Eastern Conference Semis which went 7 games.

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It was clear that the Knicks had replaced an aging Detroit Pistons as the toughest and most physical squad in the league. Their physicality came to a point where Michael Jordan himself admitted to wanting that series get done with. 

How Pat Riley motivated the Knicks to take down Michael Jordan in Game 6. 

With the Bulls up 3-2 on the Knicks, newly appointed head coach Pat Riley, thought of quite the unique strategy to help motivate his Knicks players. According to Chris Herring on ‘The Lowe Post’, Riley would play Jordan’s spectacular dunk on Ewing and the Knicks from the year prior, on loop for 5-6 minutes. 

“That play makes me sick. We cannot have anything like that. I need you guys to knock Michael Jordan to the floor and I need you guys to stop befriending the guy. You guys revere him too much and he senses it,” said Riley to his Knicks.

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This was prompted by the fact that the Bulls drove into the paint around 30 times in Game 5 and to put a stop to this, he wanted his players to be more physical. 

As for the ‘befriending’ part, it was confirmed that Jordan would fake friendships to help understand his opponent’s schemes and/or lead them into taking the foot off the gas just a little bit. 

With the Knicks being extremely physical in Game 6, Michael Jordan entered the paint merely a couple times in his 25 field goal attempts. When he did, the Knicks knocked him to the ground, reminiscent of the Pistons’ ‘Jordan Rules’. 

NYC won that game 100-86 but would end up the losing the series, further establishing the gap that existed between Michael Jordan and the rest of the league.