The Last Dance: Things we learned from episodes 3 & 4

3. The real Jordan rules

The personal rift between Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls teams and Detroit’s “Bad Boy” Pistons of the late 80’s did not surpass the duration of their playing days, but that doesn’t mean the mutual feelings of disdain between the teams as groups have run their course.

Just ask Horace Grant, who was none too shy about revealing how he felt about Detroit’s impromptu decision to prematurely exit the court without offering a parting gesture of sportsmanship to their opponent after Chicago finally took them down in the 1991 Eastern Conference finals.

“Straight up b*****s”, he called them.

https://twitter.com/SBNation/status/1254601321946087424?s=20

A sentiment that stands tall for many Bulls alumni to this day.

But in fact, it was the Bulls themselves who were effectively rendered the aforementioned obscenity by Detroit year after year before finally ascending over the mountaintop into NBA Finals oblivion in 1991.

The Pistons always seemed to have Chicago’s number throughout their playoff bouts of the late 1980’s, and Isiah Thomas, Dennis Rodman (pre-Chicago) and company routinely succeeded in making the eventual three-peat champions appear inadequately toughened on the hardwood.

This can be greatly attributed to the team’s self-dubbed “Jordan Rules” – a set of defensive stipulations set in place for stopping none other than – you guessed it, Michael Jordan.

For years fans and basketball historians had the impression that these rules simply entailed hard, and oftentimes unnecessary brash, flagrant-like contact on Jordan whenever he had the ball, a strategy that was more than acceptable to NBA refs at the time, in what can easily be deemed the league’s physical heyday prior to newly instated hand checking regulations.

But thanks to The Last Dance, the detailed specifications of the Jordan Rules were brought to full exploration.

They were listed as follows by a former Pistons’ assistant:

"“1. On the wings, push him to the elbow, and don’t let him get to the baseline 2. When he’s on top, influence him to his left 3. When he gets the ball in the low post, trap him from the top.”"

And oh yeah, one final requirement – perhaps the most imperative of them all: “when he goes in the paint, put him on his butt.”

Essentially: ‘we know we can’t stop this man, so we’re just going to have to foul him to keep him at bay.’ It worked the first three years the teams met up. But what Detroit wasn’t aware of, was the fact that they were forcing Jordan to address the one area of his game he was lacking in: physical strength.

Which, ever the perfectionist, he unsurprisingly set out to eliminate as an indisputable weakness. So did it work? Well, take six rings and a (highly debated) GOAT title later, and I’d think it’s safe to say Jordan did pretty well for himself throughout the remainder his career.

Thanks Detroit.