Steve Kerr said the fight with Michael Jordan during his career didn’t exactly go the way Jordan told her in “The Last Dance.”
Michael Jordan’s testimonials in “The Last Dance” are decidedly very mixed reception from his former teammates. Horace Grant denounced “90% of lies” and Scottie Pippen would be angry with Jordan for the way he was described. Another former Bulls player was surprised by Michael Jordan’s comments about him.
Steve Kerr, the current golden Warriors coach, spoke about the fight between him and MJ during training during the 1995-96 season. He had a black eye in the middle of the confrontation, which led to Jordan being excluded from practice by Phil Jackson, according to MJ’s version. Kerr doesn’t remember it exactly the same way. For him, Jackson had not witnessed the tense exchange.
“I have a different memory”
“I had a different memory of what Michael described on the show,” Kerr said on the Green Light podcast. I remember Phil went upstairs in his office while it was heating up because he had to take a phone call from the league or something, and that’s when we got into action. So Phil came down to see what was going on. And I remember him coming up to me and he said, ‘You’re going to have to clean this up. And I said, ‘My eye or my relationship with Michael?'”
In “The Last Dance,” Jordan said he was upset about Jackson’s repeated fouls on Kerr. “Phil felt my aggression, but he was trying to calm me down and he was starting to whistle fouls. I went crazy because, for me, protecting this guy wasn’t going to help us against New York. The next time I shot Kerr and said, ‘Now it’s a put… fault’. Kerr hit me in the chest and I hit him in the eye. And Phil kicked me out of training.”
“I have a lot of patience as a human being, but I tend to twist at some point because I’m also extremely competitive,” Kerr said in the Green Light podcast, 25 years later. I’m not good enough to hold back, in general. But I’m going to fight.”
