Complaints Against Michael Jordan’s “Last Dance” Pile Up as Ex-Bulls Teammate Supports Scottie Pippen

Five years have not been enough to cure the fallout of a decade-long dynasty. The Chicago Bulls owned the ’90s with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen as the faces of it. Their teammates rotated but played a significant role in each of the six championships. The depiction of that on The Last Dance, though, is debated both by fans and the players themselves. Newer fans probably thought it was authentic; older fans either felt it favored MJ too much or loved his rare media appearances. However, almost every Bulls player involved in the documentary, not named Michael Jordan, was left with a bitter aftertaste.

Scottie Pippen was seen as the face of that disrespect, and he was indeed the loudest. But not alone. Unlike Luc Longley and Stacey King, who were absent from the Netflix series, Horace Grant was one of the prominent narrators. And he didn’t like how any of them looked.

Grant joined his former teammate, Stacey King, on the Gimme the Hot Sauce podcast this week. Now King has used his podcast to talk about the unfairness within The Last Dance before. With Grant on the show, those feelings resurfaced. As it goes for anyone who participated in a documentary, Grant was not happy with the editing. “Once I saw it, they cut that thing like, sliced it up. I mean, I’m sitting there and I couldn’t believe it, to be honest.”

Grant revealed that he didn’t want to do the Netflix documentary but agreed because of a friend (he didn’t name who). When he saw the finished result, he felt that all of MJ’s teammates were cast in a negative light. “To be transparent, I could not believe how much they cut it up and made the majority of us look incompetent.”

Incompetent would be phrasing it lightly.

Grant was portrayed as whiny when playing against the Pistons. Jordan claimed that he made Grant toughen up against Isiah Thomas’ squad. That’s a bit of a disservice to the most consistent player in the Bulls’ first three-peat, including when they beat the Pistons.

Grant isn’t just upset for himself. It’s the disrespect to Scottie Pippen that hurt him more.

More teammates defend Scottie Pippen

After the 2020 documentary, Scottie Pippen embarked on a media campaign to give his perspective on The Last Dance. His friendship with Michael Jordan effectively ended, even though Pip claimed there was no friendship outside the court, anyway. He accused Jordan of being a ‘bad teammate’, among other things, for his hard-headed leadership.

Pippen was joined by Horace Grant and Luc Longley on the ‘No Bull Tour,’ which social media touted as the anti-Last Dance project. Grant was mostly clearing his name after MJ claimed he leaked information to Sam Smith, the author of The Jordan Rules.

But somehow, the persona from The Last Dance stuck to Pippen like chewed-up gum on limited edition Air Jordans. Pippen was seen as the guy who would go through mid-season surgery for not getting a better contract, throw chairs in the crowd, and not power through a migraine. All factors, Grant says, “was an unfair portrayal of one of the top 75 players in Scottie in that documentary.”

Stacey King has been Pip’s most vocal defender since the documentary. Among his first reactions in 2020 was about the unfair criticism of Pippen’s migraine episode. With Grant on the show, King felt The Last Dance should’ve made a clear distinction in the two three-peats.

“I felt like anything that happened in that first three-peat had nothing to do with the second three-peat. Nothing. That 1.8 seconds that Scottie sat out had nothing to do with the second go-round,” King, who won his three rings with the Bulls from 1991 to 1993, said.

While his feelings are valid, The Last Dance was at its core a Michael Jordan-focused documentary on his career, produced by his company, Jump 23. Unfortunately, he was going to take center stage, and there’s no do-overs.