Michael Jordan and Scott Burrell were teammates on the Chicago Bulls during the 1997-98 NBA season.
Jordan saw that Burrell was a talented player. However, Burrell lacked some things Jordan wanted from him.
So, in typical Jordan fashion, the NBA legend pushed Burrell hard and even tried to get him to fight him.
It never happened, though, since Burrell was too nice.
“Scotty Burrell was a talented guy,” Jordan said in The Last Dance doc. “What Scotty was lacking was commitment, determination, seriousness. So he became my guy to kinda push, keep pushing, keep pushing. I tried to get him to fight me a couple of times, in a good sense. Just to get him, ‘I’m tired of you picking on me.’ That type of mentality. I could never get him to do it. He’s such a nice guy. But I know we were gonna need him at some point in time. And he’s gonna remember this and he’s gonna get out there and he’s gonna fight.”
Jordan ridiculed teammates until they got on the same level as him.
And if you didn’t get on the same level as Jordan, he would make your life miserable.
“My mentality was to go out and win at any cost,” Jordan said in The Last Dance doc. “If you don’t wanna live that regimented mentality, then you don’t need to be alongside me because I’m gonna ridicule you until you get on the same level as me. And if you don’t get on the same level then it’s gonna be hell for you.”
Jordan crossed the line multiple times. He punched Will Perdue and Steve Kerr and told teammates not to pass the ball to Bill Cartwright in crunch time.
However, Jordan’s fiery leadership style worked, as the Bulls won six championships, went undefeated in the NBA Finals and three-peated twice in the ’90s.
“I pulled people along when they didn’t wanna be pulled,” Jordan said in The Last Dance dic. “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.”
With the Bulls, Jordan won six championships, six Finals MVPs, five regular-season MVPs, 10 scoring titles, three steals titles and one Defensive Player of the Year Award.
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