Michael Jordan Tears Up After Delivering Riveting Speech On Why He Was So Hard On His Teammates

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.

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.”