ESPN’s The Last Dance continues to generate massive interest in the sports world, with sky-high television ratings for the third and fourth installments on Sunday and seemingly endless discussion on social media. While six (!) episodes remain, this week’s content didn’t disappoint, from stories about Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman to the revelation that Michael Jordan hates the Bad Boy version of the Detroit Pistons “to this day.”
One of the reasons for that animosity is the now infamous decision by the Pistons to leave the floor early at the end of Game 4 of the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals, exiting without acknowledging Bulls in the final game of what became a sweep that sent Chicago to the NBA Finals. During The Last Dance, Jordan said “you can’t convince me (Isiah Thomas) wasn’t an asshole” for how things transpired and the discussion of the incident continued into Monday.
Former Pistons big man and current Las Vegas Aces head coach Bill Laimbeer visited The Jump on ESPN and, in short, he didn’t hold back or apologize for anything that transpired back in 1991.
“They whined and cried for a year and a half about how bad we were for the game, but more importantly, they said we were bad people,” Laimbeer said. “We weren’t bad people. We were just basketball players winning. And that really stuck with me because they didn’t know who we were or what we were about as individuals and our family life. But all that whining they did, I didn’t want to shake their hand. They were just whiners. They won the series. Give him credit. We got old. They got past us. But okay, move on.”
Laimbeer likely isn’t alone, especially when discussing folks that were rooting for the Pistons back in that era, in having this viewpoint, but it certainly isn’t the mainstream consensus after all of this time. That won’t stop the discussion from persisting on this topic and, while it has been three decades, there seems to be just as much energy on the two sides as there has ever been, particularly with how Jordan lit up when discussing the rivalry on The Last Dance.
In the end, though, it certainly isn’t a surprise to hear one of the enforcers of the Bad Boy Pistons taking this particular stance. Now, attention will turn to the final six episodes of the documentary series, with plenty of other avenues to explore for controversy.