In the new Michael Jordan documentary, “The Last Dance,” the basketball icon said he had no part in his longtime rival Isiah Thomas being left off the U.S. Olympic “Dream Team,” but it seems this might not be so. A newly released audio recording contradicts Jordan’s claim.
In the much-touted ESPN documentary on Jordan’s career, the six-time NBA champion said he never lobbied for Thomas to be left off from the Dream Team, which went on to win gold at the 1992 Olympics. The Dream Team ended up featuring legendary players including Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley and Magic Johnson.
However, sportswriter Jack McCallum recently played an interview from 2011 on his podcast, The Dream Team Tapes, which contradicted Jordan’s statement, The New York Post reported.
“(Selection committee member) Rod Thorn called me. I said, ‘Rod, I won’t play if Isiah Thomas is on the team,’” Jordan said in the 2011 interview. “He assured me. He said, ‘You know what? (USA coach) Chuck Daly doesn’t want Isiah. So, Isiah is not going to be part of the team.’”
But Thorn, who was the Bulls’ general manager when the team selected Jordan in the 1984 draft, recently told ESPN’s Golic & Wingo that Thomas’ name never came up in a phone call concerning the Dream Team, ESPN reported.
“There was never anything in my conversation with (Jordan) that had to do with Isiah Thomas, period,” Thorn told Golic & Wingo. “He said, ‘I’ll do it.’ … Isiah’s name never came up during that conversation. He never backtracked and said he didn’t want to do it from that time on, to those of us in the NBA office.”
Thomas himself said in the documentary, “I don’t know what went into that process. I met the criteria to be selected, but I wasn’t.”
Throughout their careers, Jordan and Thomas had an intense rivalry. In “The Last Dance” Jordan admitted he still had “hate” for Thomas. It all stemmed from Thomas’ Pistons leaving the court rather than shaking hands with Jordan’s victorious Bulls after the 1991 Eastern Conference finals
Yet in the documentary, Jordan denied he played any part in Thomas being left off the team.
“I respect Isiah Thomas’ talent. To me, the best point guard of all time is Magic Johnson and right behind him is Isiah Thomas,” Jordan said in “The Last Dance.”
“No matter how much I hate him, I respect his game. Now, it was insinuated that I was asking (for Thomas to be left off the team) but I never threw his name in there.”
Even though the 10-part “The Last Dance” has been wildly popular, “it has also been met with some criticism. Many critics have noted that Jordan’s production company was involved in making the show, and many of the Hall of Famers’ faults were glossed over as a result,” The Guardian reported.
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Jordan’s former Bulls teammate Scottie Pippen is reportedly “livid” over his portrayal in the documentary, which concluded on May 17.
Another teammate, Horace Grant, complained, “When that so-called documentary is about one person, basically, and he has the last word on what’s going to be put out there … it’s not a documentary,” Grant said. “It’s his narrative of what happens in the last quote-unquote dance. That’s not a documentary because a whole bunch of things were cut out, edited out. So that’s why I call it a so-called documentary.”
