Michael Jordan’s Teammates Were ‘Stunned’ When MJ Cried After Bulls Won First Title In 1991: ‘The Only Emotion We Had Ever Seen Out Of Him Was Anger Or Frustration, We Were Literally Stunned To See Those Emotions’

Michael Jordan‘s teammates were “stunned” when MJ cried after the Chicago Bulls won their first NBA title in 1991. 

The Bulls defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1991 NBA Finals in five games.

Jordan was named Finals MVP and the shooting guard was very emotional in the locker room. 

“Everybody has the picture in their mind of when we beat Cleveland on that last shot and he’s punching the air and he’s all excited,” Will Perdue said in The Last Dance doc. “That’s who we knew, the competitive Michael Jordan. The win-at-all-costs Michael Jordan. Sometimes we’d question whether he was human, whether he had feelings. Just a guy that was totally focused on one thing and one thing only. The only emotion we had ever seen out of him was anger or frustration. We were literally stunned to see those emotions.”

After “The Last Dance” came out in 2020, everyone saw that Jordan wasn’t a nice guy or the best teammate. The Hall of Famer punched Perdue and Steve Kerr and yelled and cursed at teammates several times. 

However, Jordan did what he had to do to win. 

“I pulled people along when they didn’t wanna be pulled,” Jordan said. “I challenged people when they didn’t wanna be challenged and I earned that right because my teammates came after me. They didn’t endure all the things that I endured. Once you join the team, you live at a certain standard that I play the game and I wasn’t gonna take anything less.

“Now, if that means I had to go in and get in your ass a little bit, then I did that. You ask all my teammates, the one thing about Michael Jordan was he never asked me to do something that he didn’t f—ing do. When people see this, they gonna say, ‘Well, he wasn’t really a nice guy. He may have been a tyrant.’ Well, that’s you because you never won anything. I wanted to win, but I wanted them to win and be a part of that as well. Look, I don’t have to do this. I’m only doing it because it is who I am. That’s how I played the game. That was my mentality. If you don’t wanna play that way, don’t play that way.”

The Bulls won six championships, three-peated twice and went undefeated in the Jordan era.

With the Bulls, Jordan won six Finals MVPs, five regular-season MVPs, 10 scoring titles, three steals titles and one Defensive Player of the Year Award. He’s arguably the greatest player in NBA history. 

Jordan has career averages of 30.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 2.3 steals and 0.8 blocks with the Bulls and Washington Wizards. He’s first in NBA history in points per game, fourth in steals, fifth in field goals and second in player efficiency rating.