Michael Jordan Told A Wild Story About ‘The Bulls Traveling Cocaine Circus’ During ‘The Last Dance’

Perhaps the best part of The Last Dance, ESPN’s 10-part docuseries about the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, is the sheer number of incredible stories that get told by guys like Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson, Scottie Pippen, and the rest of the squad. One such story got told on Sunday evening during the first chapter of the story, and it involved Jordan making the jump from the University of North Carolina to the NBA.

Jordan stressed that legendary Tar Heels coach Dean Smith ran a “clean program,” which was not necessarily the case in Chicago, a team for which “drugs were prevalent” and the roster was composed of “a lot of partiers.” The camera then cut to Jordan in his living room being interviewed for the series, where he was asked about an old article in which the squad was referred to as “the Bulls traveling cocaine circus.”

After hearing this, Jordan tipped his head back and let out a hearty laugh, and while he did not explicitly say that was accurate, he laid out why that wasn’t necessarily far from the truth.

Look, guys were doing things that I didn’t see. I had one event, preseason, I think we were in Peoria. It was in the hotel, so I’m trying to find my teammates. I started knocking on doors. I get to this one door, and I knock on the door and I can hear someone says, “Shh shh shh, someone’s outside.” And then you hear this deep voice say, “Who is it?” I say, “MJ.” And then they all say, “Aw f*ck, he’s just a rookie, don’t worry about it.” So they open up the door, I walk in and practically the whole team was in there. And it was like, things I’ve never seen in my life as a young kid. You got your lines over here, your weed smokers over here, you’ve got your women over here. So, the first thing I said, “Look, man, I’m out.” Cause all I can about think is, if they come and raid this place right about now, I am just as guilty as everyone else that’s in this room. And from that point on, I was more or less on my
own.

Here’s the video of Jordan telling the story.

The entire first episode is fantastic, which is not unexpected, considering it is a tell-all series into one of the most captivating teams in the history of American sports. But it is probably fair to say that The Last Dance would still be outstanding if it was just 10 hours of Michael Jordan telling stories about Bulls things that made him laugh extremely hard. This one highlights an interesting part of Jordan’s backstory — the dude was so hyper-focused on basketball and had such a sheltered upbringing that he was mortified of getting arrested at a party in the 1980s — but above everything else, this was the single-funniest story of the episode.