Unlike today’s NBA landscape, the Chicago Bulls and New York Knicks waged war for Eastern Conference supremacy in the ’90s. What hasn’t changed is the battleground of Madison Square Garden. The big, bold lights and raucous crowd of the Big Apple are not for the faint-hearted. Over two decades since he brought the Garden to its knees, Jordan is shedding new light on the psychological battle and the role Scottie Pippen needed to play in that war.

It comes through in the latest edition of MJ’s Insights to Excellence, as the NBA kicks off its first-ever Pioneers Classic festivities in Black History Month. The Knicks were the first team to sign a Black player, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, in 1950. He made his debut at MSG, already known as the ‘Mecca of Basketball’ before the NBA really had a unique identity, and paved the way for greats like Michael Jordan.

Jordan explained that while MSG’s environment was never “hostile” in a way that intimidated him, the noise was meant to break a player’s focus.

“One time the balls goes up, I never even hear the fans,” Jordan said. “I get into the game, my opponent becomes more the focal point. The fans are fans… I get tunnel vision. What they are doing is trying to distract you. I take it as a challenge. I’m gonna keep you quiet for a while. The only way you can affect what I am doing is to put on some shorts and come out here. That’s my mentality.”

It’s well documented that Jordan loved playing at MSG. He fed off the fans’ energy, including from Knicks superfan and old friend Spike Lee, and clarified that playing in New York was a privilege and there was absolutely no fear attached to that.

The 6x NBA champion revealed that his role at The Garden wasn’t just to score for the Bulls. He admitted that he had to be his teammates’ mental shield.

“As a leader, I got to make sure the team, Scottie Pippen and all these guys, don’t fall prey to that,” Jordan revealed.

Jordan described himself and Pippen as “mouthpieces” for their head coach, Phil Jackson, who gave both of them one task.

“Taking the crowd out,” Jordan revealed.

That was the game plan Jackson brought to the visitors’ locker room in MSG. In fact, Jordan and his team never lost a playoff series to Patrick Ewing’s Knicks during the Bulls’ legendary run in the ’90s.

Jordan scored 40+ points against the Knicks in the playoffs seven times, including his 54-point game in the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals, which remains an all-time favorite for fans to this day.

But perhaps the most telling part of Jordan’s reflection on the Knicks rivalry is his continued acknowledgment of Pippen as an equal partner in their success.

Michael Jordan finally broke the silence after his relationship with Scottie Pippen worsened

We already know how things have gone down between Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. They are not the same united duo that gave Ewing and Charles Oakley a tough time and made the 1992 and 1993 playoff series between the Bulls and Knicks an epic battle. Their friendship fractured after The Last Dance premiered in 2020. (That documentary perfectly summarized how much Jordan’s final game in MSG meant to him.)

Pippen has spoken at length about what made Jordan unpleasant to work with as a player and as an individual. His harshest comments came in his 2021 memoir, Unguarded. In one of the chapters, he revealed that the Netflix series “glorified Michael Jordan while not giving nearly enough praise to me and my proud teammates.”

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On the one hand, Pippen went on the record to say Jordan was “horrible to play with,” but on the other hand, he defends Jordan’s status in history.

But amid the chaos, the media-shy Jordan has largely stayed quiet on their public fallout. In the latest excerpt of that August interview that annoys Charles Barkley, Jordan deviated from his quiet stance to provide a rare glimpse into the internal leadership dynamics of the Bulls dynasty. His comments prove that Jackson presented them to New York as a unit, not as Michael Jordan & Co.

Jordan emphasizes that their greatest challenge in New York was having “tunnel vision.” He praised the Knicks fans as “hard workers” who respected the game, often cheering for opponents when they were special enough. It was Jordan’s and Pippen’s job to use the New Yorker energy to fuel the team.

New York hasn’t changed. That’s why Jordan advises today’s players facing the pressure of The Garden to be themselves.

“You are you 365 days of the year,” the NBA legend said. “If you are an impactful player to your team, shut them up.”

By instilling this same mentality in Pippen and the Bulls roster, Jordan proved that what happened in the huddle mattered more than the scoreboard.