Report: Michael Jordan Wouldn’t Let Horace Grant Eat After Bad Games

In Friday’s Hot Clicks: another example of Michael Jordan being a jerk, Peyton Manning roasts Tom Brady and more.

No soup for you

Before The Last Dance debuted on ESPN, Michael Jordan said he thought the series would make people think he’s “a horrible guy.” If that’s the case, then he’s lucky this anecdote didn’t make the documentary because it would only strengthen that impression. 

Sam Smith, the longtime Bulls reporter who wrote the illuminating MJ book The Jordan Rules, appeared on KNBR’s Tolbert, Krueger and Brooks Podcast and told a story in which Jordan is way more cruel than we’ve seen in the documentary. 

Jordan, Smith says, wouldn’t let Horace Grant eat on the team plane if Grant had a lousy game. 

Here’s the full quote:

“Players would come to me over the years and said, ‘You know what he did? He took Horace [Grant’s] food away on the plane because Horace had a bad game. [Michael] told the stewardesses ‘Don’t feed him, he doesn’t deserve to eat.’

They would tell me stuff like that and they they’d say ‘Why don’t you write this?’ And I would say ‘Well I can’t write it unless you say it.’ I don’t do ‘league sources.’ You can’t do that kind of stuff on these kind of things. ‘If you want to be quoted I’ve got no problem with that.’ ‘No, no, no we can’t say that about Michael Jordan.”

The main reason you won’t hear this story in the documentary is because Smith had never told it before and none of Jordan’s teammates would put themselves on camera telling such a story. (Smith, an old-school journalist, apparently sees a difference between saying it on a podcast and writing it.) The reason you won’t hear many stories of Jordan’s cruelty is that Jordan has creative control over the doc. 

Jason Hehir, the film’s director, said he’s “shocked” Jordan approved the seventh and eighth installments of the series, which include footage of Jordan being a real jerk in practice.

In a perfect world, you’d be able to make a documentary about Jordan without having to run everything by him and you’d be able to explore the toll his maniacal pursuit of greatness exacted on his teammates. Hopefully Episodes 7 & 8 address that in a satisfying manner, but this is what Ken Burns was talking about when he said ESPN was wrong to include Jordan’s production company in the project. 

Here’s the thing about this

Conference commissioners tell @Stadium, general student bodies would not have to return to campus for student-athletes to play football this season & also conferences likely would play this fall even w/out all of their league members https://t.co/4hmXhZuxZX

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) May 8, 2020

The NCAA will never allow this to happen because if it does, it exposes the whole college sports model as a sham. If college athletes are supposed to be just like every other student, how can you rationalize them being the only people on campus just so they can play sports? That’s an admission that their roles as athletes supersede their roles as students.

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Around the sports world

While the NFL rolled out its schedule with much fanfare, the commissioner of the CFL said its season is likely to be canceled. ... Jim Harbaugh is urging the NFL and NCAA to allow players to declare for the draft after any season they choose. ... The XFL is trying to find a buyer to purchase the whole league out of bankruptcy. ... Tottenham star Heung-min Son completed his mandatory Korean military training and won an award for finishing first in his class of 157. ... Here’s a silly post about a Carl Crawford card featuring a player who is not Carl Crawford. 

Peyton Manning spent a full minute roasting Tom Brady

Sorry not sorry... pic.twitter.com/qSbYVsHXVz

— Tom Brady (@TomBrady) May 7, 2020

Trailer for a new series about the Donald Sterling Clippers

Give me more dodgeball trick shots

First trailer for Madden 21

Not sports

Microsoft revealed a bunch of stuff the Xbox X, including the first look at gameplay from the new console. ... Somebody flushed a toilet during a Supreme Court hearing. ... A man attempting to sail around the Pacific Ocean found himself unable to dock and resupply when every island started closing its ports to outsiders. ... An historic May snowstorm is about to hit the Northeast tonight, because climate change didn’t take a break during the pandemic.

This is fake, sadly. (Only one of the bullets had been fired.)

I had no idea this animal existed until yesterday

Endangered mountain bongo calf explores its enclosure at a Spanish park pic.twitter.com/7bzyFQ8SK9

— Reuters (@Reuters) May 7, 2020

A good song

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