Before the release of the Last Dance, Michael Jordan told director Jason Hehir that he feared the documentary would make him look like a horrible guy because there was a ton of footage of him bullying Scotty Burrell.
Via The Athletic
When people see this footage I’m not sure they’re going to be able to understand why I was so intense, why I did the things I did, why I acted the way I acted, and why I said the things I said
”When you see the footage of [me riding with Scotty Burrell], you’re going to think that I’m a horrible guy,” Hehir remembers His Airness telling him before defending his aggressive approach. “But you have to realize that the reason why I was treating him like that is because I needed him to be tough in the playoffs and we’re facing the Indiana’s and Miami’s and New York’s in the Eastern Conference. He needed to be tough and I needed to know that I could count on him.”
Episode 7 was finally the episode that showed Jordan bullying Burrell during the Bulls 98 season.
MJ and Scott Burrell😂pic.twitter.com/maccO7tc3Y
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) May 11, 2020
Need a 10 part documentary on the times MJ called Scott Burrell a ho 😂 pic.twitter.com/JZoWtfLhc7
— Big Cat (@BarstoolBigCat) May 11, 2020
At the end of the episode of a tearful Jordan delivered a riveting speech on why he was so hard on Burrell and his other teammates.
Look, winning has a price,” . “And leadership has a price. So I pulled people along when they didn’t want to be pulled. I challenged people when they didn’t want to be challenged. And I earned that right because my teammates who came after me didn’t endure all the things that I endured. Once you joined the team, you lived at a certain standard that I played the game. And I wasn’t going to take any less.
”Now, if that means I had to go in there and get in your ass a little bit, then I did that,” he continued. “You ask all my teammates. The one thing about Michael Jordan was he never asked me to do something that he didn’t f***** do.”
The end of Episode 7 … WOW.#TheLastDance pic.twitter.com/N3c5lN0mLI
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) May 11, 2020