“He Took Offense to That”: Former Bulls Teammate Talks About Michael Jordan’s Fierce Competitive Nature Even With His Own Teammates

Whether in a game or in practice, Michael Jordan was always fierce on the court. Probably, it is that attitude that made him the player he has become. Recalling one of the stories that showed how fierce he was, his teammate in Chicago Bulls, Bill Wennington, shared an incident of a practice session.

When they were doing 3 on 2 and 2 on 1 drills, Wennington once blocked James. Jordan, unsurprisingly, did not take to it kindly. Wennington said that, for the rest of the practice session, Jordan kept taking him on, both physically and verbally.

“He took offense to that and challenged me the rest of practice to block his shot both verbally and physically,” he said in a Q&A session with NBA.

“I was isolated on the far side of the floor… guarding Luc Longley, and Mike was running the screen roll up on the left side, and he dribbled through the whole team all the way across the floor, jumped into me and shot the ball over me and said ‘block that!’ [and] added a few other words to it, as well. And it was on from there on.”

Wennington played for Chicago Bulls between 1993 and 1999. He had started his NBA career in 1985 with Dallas Mavericks. After five years, he joined Sacramento Kings but played only for a season. In 1991, he moved to the Italian league. He played two seasons there before coming back to the NBA and joining the Bulls. He joined the Bulls at a time when they were dominating the NBA.

A documentary on Michael Jordan, The Last Dance

The heroics of Jordan and the Bulls in the 90s has been well recorded and released as a documentary last Sunday. The 10-episode series, The Last Dance, concentrates mainly on the 1997-98 season. The audience received the first episode well last Sunday and are waiting on the other episodes to air. The episodes broadcast every Sunday on ESPN for viewers in US and on Netflix for viewers outside the country.