When Michael Jordan disrespected Reggie Miller with a questionable analogy: “It’s like chicken fighting with a woman”
Michael Jordan has always been someone that finds a way to get under someone's skin. Whether it was simply telling a player he wasn't good enough or even going at someone's personal life, Jordan wanted to make his opponents' lives worse on the court.
It worked for the most part. Not only is Jordan one of the greatest players in NBA history, but he also had an edge over guys being scared of him.
One player that Jordan always seemed to talk smack to was Reggie Miller. Michael Jordan spoke about playing against Miller and why he bothered him so much:
“I don’t really dislike anybody in the league, but playing Reggie Miller drives me nuts,” Jordan told ESPN Magazine.
“It’s like chicken-fighting with a woman. His game is all this flopping-type thing. He weighs only 185 pounds, so you have to be careful, don’t touch him, or it’s a foul. On offense, I use all my 215 pounds and just move him out. But he has his hands on you all the time, like a woman holding your waist. I just want to beat his hands off because it’s illegal. It irritates me.”
Reggie Miller had spoken about the situations that he and Jordan were in throughout their careers, and Reggie appears to have some bad memories of it. When you consider Jordan ruled during the era when Miller was a household name, it's easy to see why Miller dislikes him, especially when we consider the smack-talking.
"It brought back a lot of the good and bad memories of going against that dude," Miller said of Michael Jordan, the focus of the ESPN documentary that debuted Sunday night.
Michael Jordan had players that bothered him
Michael Jordan spoke about other players that annoyed him. Dennis Rodman happened to be one of the others and that's funny considering they played together and won championships. Jordan had the following to say about Rodman:
"Of course, our guy Dennis Rodman can be irritating. But he used to guard me when he was with Detroit, and I didn't let him get to me. I didn't get irritated by any of the Pistons, because that was their tactic, to get into your head.
Dennis gets into Alonzo Mourning's head now. Alonzo's weak in the mind. He has to know how to be tough and overlook those types of things. Alonzo's an intimidator, but sometimes the intimidator can be intimidated. The bully can be bullied."
There was a hilarious interaction between Muggsy Bogues and how it made Bogues never play the same again. While that's tough to laugh at, it's funny to think that Bogues wasn't the same because of what Michael Jordan said.
"On the biggest possession of the game, Muggsy had the ball with the Hornets down one. Jordan backed off of him and told him, 'Shoot it, you f***ing midget.' Muggsy shot it, didn’t come close. A year later Muggsy actually told Johnny Bach that he believes that single play ruined his career. His shot never recovered."
Despite all that, he is still arguably the greatest of all time to ever grace the game of basketball.