Near the end of the Bulls second three-peat, Michael Jordan had enough. All the lights, cameras, and tape recorders constantly shoved in his face by the media covering his final run in Chicago—not to mention all the off-the-court obligations required of the world’s most popular athlete—had worn his patience thin.
He was done hiding his disdain and long ago ceased to make himself available on a nearly daily basis for reporters. Even those who followed MJ for years and shared a good working relationship with him—like Skip Bayless, the co-star of FS1’s Skip and Shannon: Undefeated, who was an award-winning columnist in Chicago back then—felt the brunt.
“He walked by me and the beat reporter from the Chicago Tribune after some practices and we’d look at him like, ‘Today? Maybe?’” remembers Bayless. “And he would usually just scowl and roll his eyes and one day he walked by both of us and said—and pardon my French—‘I an’t talking to ya’ll motherfuckers today.’ He just dismissed it and he didn’t really care.”
It wasn’t personal, it was just business. Jordan was exhausted from all the questions and requirements of his time away from the game of basketball as he pursued a sixth championship at age 34. But can you imagine how ornery MJ would’ve been if he was asked about Dennis Rodman’s crazy club antics broadcast on IG Live? Or the firestorm he’d have to help extinguish if Scottie Pippen liked a post trashing Bulls management? Or the hoopla some snot-nosed caddy would create by live-tweeting Jordan playing golf and gambling big bucks?
Perhaps no professional sports team in modern history was as scrutinized as the 1997-98 Bulls. With the whole world well aware that Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, and coach Phil Jackson would not be with the organization the following season, the amount of media chronicling that Bulls team was epic. Even by today’s standards. But without the scourge of social media, and the controversies it so easily stirs up, those who covered Jordan and the Bulls argue they had it way easier than today’s top teams.
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“Pretty much every player I speak to from that era is grateful that there was no social media back then,” says New York Times reporter Marc Stein. “The Bulls, of course, have to be extra, extra, extra grateful. Jordan was the biggest NBA superstar ever. Don’t forget that the mid-1990s spotlight got on his nerves plenty such as it was.”
Which begs the question: How would the ‘97-98 Bulls have fared in a world where your every move—on and off-the-court—is scrutinized and broadcast around the world? Would Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, Jackson, and the rest of them survived, thrived, or buckled under the pressure of the constant dissection of their professional and personal lives?
“I think it would’ve been impossible for any team to survive it,” ESPN senior writer Jackie MacMullan says. “The Bulls are so lucky social media didn’t exist because they were crazy. Rodman was crazy and Jordan had his own lifestyle that he probably didn’t want to share with everybody. He was pretty private. People respected his privacy which wouldn’t happen today.”
No it would not. A trip to the casino, like Jordan infamously took in the middle of the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals, wouldn’t make the newspaper a day or two later. You’d see images of MJ at a table on a nobody’s IG Live minutes after he sat down. Rodman going on a Vegas “vacation” in the middle of the season would’ve blown up Twitter. Pippen shit-talking Jerry Krause would’ve created a thousand memes. Those Bulls are exceedingly lucky the infancy of social media was a decade away.
As Stein pointed out, the scrutiny of traditional media—TV outlets, newspapers, and magazines before the Internet became a thing—was a big reason why Jordan walked away from the game after the 1993 NBA Finals. We’ll see in The Last Dance, ESPN’s 10-part docuseries chronicling the ‘97-98 Bulls, how fed up MJ was during his final days in Chicago.
“He was just tired of everybody scrutinizing every little thing he did and said,” says MacMullan.
“The Bulls are so lucky social media didn’t exist because they were crazy. Rodman was crazy and Jordan had his own lifestyle that he probably didn’t want to share with everybody." — Jackie MacMullan
If Jordan existed in today’s NBA, the lens on him would’ve been magnified exponentially. In light of that, maybe we should put more respect on LeBron James’ eight-straight trips to the Finals in the Eastern Conference and the Warriors’ run to five-straight Finals considering they coincided with the explosion of social media and were largely able to rise above its distractions.
“The ever-present microscope of social media and the hysteria that Golden State generated throughout its five consecutive trips to the NBA Finals enable you to make the argument that those Warriors—no matter where you stand on which team was better—assembled their own historic run in much tougher conditions,” says Stein.
Props are due for sure, but no matter how popular you think LeBron or Steph Curry is, their celebrity is nothing compared to Jordan’s in the 90s. The man was considered bigger than the Pope. People wept in his presence. While he never cracked under the pressure of the media’s constant scrutiny, he and the ‘97-98 Bulls were dissected unlike any team in NBA history. Would the additional attention of social media have tripped up Jordan, Pippen, or Rodman at some point? It’s reasonable to believe a horribly timed controversy via the cesspool that is social media would have thrown the ’97-98 Bulls off stride, right?
Not if you ask Bayless. He thinks Jordan would’ve handled himself just fine if social media was around. The ultimate competitor, who was mentally tougher than all his peers and able to find the smallest of edges, Jordan would have risen above the noise and nonsense.
“I don’t think the internet scrutiny, the social media frenzy, I just think he would’ve been above that,” says Bayless. “He fed off of that. Would others have cracked under a social media onslaught? The worst thing I see people do in the professional athlete business is fall victim to reading what people are saying about people on the Internet. It creeps into your psyche and it starts to dictate who you are. Whoever those people are, they start to define who you are. Would Scottie have fallen victim to it? I don’t think Rodman would have. [Toni] Kukoc might have. Jordan was just so great.”
Additional reporting by Zach Frydenlund
