Any fan of the NBA in the ’90s knows all about the Chicago Bulls. They know about Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Phil Jackson, of course, and the two separate three-peats. They can probably name the rest of those championship-winning rosters too, from Horace Grant to BJ Armstrong, Toni Kukoč to Luc Longley. One player that left an indelible mark all his own was Dennis Rodman, both for what he did on the court and off of it, as well.
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Rodman had done plenty before getting to Chicago. He’d captured two Defensive Player of the Year awards as an integral part of the Bad Boy Pistons, and he’d led the NBA in rebounding four times. The fame and exposure afforded by those Bulls teams allowed Rodman to become more of a household name, though, and he took full advantage.
He embraced being known as “the Worm,” and it seemed not a day passed by in the mid-’90s without another crazy Rodman story coming out. Sometimes he wore a ridiculous outfit to be provocative, such as wedding dress for his marriage to himself. Sometimes he changed his hair color from one crazy combination to another. One time, he kicked a cameraman under the basket.
Former NBA center Jim McIlvaine said recently in an interview with Leonardo Salvaggio that although Rodman was known as a troublemaker, he has it on good authority that he’s nothing like his reputation suggests.
According to McIlvaine’s fellow Marquette alum Doc Rivers, who played with Rodman in San Antonio, “It would ruin his reputation if people knew what a nice guy he really was off the court.”
Rodman titled his autobiography Bad As I Wanna Be. He had numerous tabloid-worthy relationships and was always doing publicity stunts to show what a wild guy he was. He even befriended North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un later in life. There are also numerous stories about his kindness, though, to corroborate what Rivers said.
Dennis Rodman could always be counted on to do the unexpected
McIlvaine recalled a story from when he was with the Seattle SuperSonics and Rodman was with the Bulls to illustrate just how unpredictable he was. Former Blazers coach Terry Stotts, who back then was an assistant on Seattle, told McIlvaine not to worry about Rodman if he decided to shoot from outside.
“I was on Rodman, and I remember [Stotts] said, ‘If he goes out to three and he wants to shoot a three, let him shoot a three,’ because Dennis was shooting probably 18% from three. He took ’em, but he really didn’t make ’em very often. He got an offensive rebound, as Dennis Rodman did thousands and thousands of times, and he dribbled out to the corner, and I could hear [Stotts] yelling from the bench, ‘Don’t foul him!’
McIlvaine remembered how he didn’t even contest the shot, and of course Rodman drained it. “I look at the bench, and the bench is like, ‘Well … that’s what’s gonna happen.'”
Rodman averaged just 7.3 points per game during his career, and in this season, he averaged one made three every 10 games or so. Stotts gave McIlvaine good advice, this just happened to be the one time that it didn’t work out.
