“Push him left!” – John Salley reveals Detroit Pistons' secret Jordan rule to stop MJ

The 4-time champion talked about how the Detroit Pistons would get ready to stop MJ.

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The original “Bad Boy” Detroit Pistons are one of the toughest opponents Michael Jordan faced off against during his playing days with the Chicago Bulls. The so-called “Jordan rules” that were implemented by the team coached by Chuck Daly had a single and crucial goal – to neutralize the GOAT.

John Salley had great insights

As the first player to win a championship with three different teams (Pistons, Bulls, Lakers), John Salley is someone who can provide great insight given all the all-time greats he shared the court with throughout his NBA run.

On a recent episode of All The Smoke podcast, Salley talked a lot about his days with the Pistons and this included great details about gameplans focused on stopping Michael Jordan.

“Push him left! That's your Jordan rule right there," Salley said. "That's all I'm allowed to give away.”

Salley continued by drawing a parallel between MJ and Kobe Bryant. According to the 4x champion, the secret Jordan rule would've worked on the former. Not the latter though.

“Kobe is not the chucker, Michael is a chucker. Kobe shots go in, Michael kept shooting until they went in but, Mike was deadly,” Salley said. “The other Jordan rule was make Scottie keep the ball. Make everybody else try to beat us.”

The Jordan rules proved to be effective, to an extent. But once MJ figured out how to counter them, he became the unstoppable force and took the league by storm.

A well-known fact?

Long before the Pistons made the most of their pre-game anti-Jordan tactics on their way to winning two NBA championships, another legendary player identified the same weakness in MJ's offensive arsenal.

"I'm a student of the game…Mike couldn't go left," George Gervin said in 2017. "I'd just get on the right side and make him go that way. He was dominant right. Until he made that adjustment in his career, he didn't take off. Once he made that adjustment, he could go both ways and get by you, lights out."

In a lesser-known turn of events, “The Iceman” finished his amazing NBA career as Jordan’s teammate in Chicago. Being a great scorer himself, maybe Gervin gave some advice to then-still young MJ. 

If he did, everything Jordan learned from him culminated in Gervin's last NBA game. Because, no matter what they threw at him, the Boston Celtics had no answer for His Airness. As a result, he delivered one of the most historic playoff performances with a 63-point outing against one of the best teams ever.