The weird battle between LeBron James and Charles Barkley has been a topic for what seems like forever. After LeBron’s comments that the Cleveland Cavaliers needed to improve their roster, Barkley publicly dragged on the Cavaliers star for the method in which he called for those improvements.
It seemed as though the dust may have finally settled, with Barkley making a somber declaration of his right to an opinion even as he dropped a couple f-bombs while telling the “haters” what the score was at a nightclub.
Meanwhile, the conversation appears ready to continue after former Chicago Bulls GM Jerry Krause told Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski on his podcast that Michael Jordan never made any kind of similar request to LeBron’s.
That’s not strictly true, by many reports. Jordan famously made requests for UNC players throughout his career, and was pretty vocal about wanting the Bulls roster to get better.
In fact, in Sam Smith’s book “The Jordan Rules” there’s a pretty explicit version of these events, with Jordan on record saying he was going to bypass Krause and go straight to owner Jerry Reinsdorf.
Via Washington Post and h/t u/TheTupperwareGang:
(After learning that NBA veteran and former North Carolina Tar Heel Walter Davis had been traded to Portland and not the Bulls, Jordan responded before a game against the Nets: “As soon as we get back, I’m calling {Jerry} Reinsdorf. Krause has messed everything up again. He can’t do anything.”
(Two days after that, Jordan had taken off after Krause again. “If I were general manager, we’d be a better team.”)
Reinsdorf had been obligated to respond publicly, and the situation clearly made him uncomfortable, though his support for Krause was unequivocal. “Michael Jordan,” said Reinsdorf, “is undoubtedly the greatest player that ever lived. He’s probably one of the three greatest competitors of all time in any sport, the other two being Jake LaMotta and Muhammad Ali. Guys you had to kill to beat. Michael’s like that.
“But he’s still a player and, quite frankly, players don’t know a whole lot about coaching, and they don’t know a whole lot about what it takes to make a deal. If Michael knew what we tried to accomplish and the pitfalls and problems we ran into {trying to obtain Walter Davis}, he probably wouldn’t feel as frustrated. But he doesn’t, and we can’t sit and explain to every player what moves we are trying to make. And we cannot single out one player and make him consultant to the general manager.”
So technically Krause is correct, if we’re saying MJ always went over his head so he never asked him directly?
It was only a matter of time before LeBron’s request got compared to Jordan in some way, and the countdown to revisionist history of Jordan in that comparison started soon after. It came quicker than we thought here, and from Krause no less!
I said I didn’t think the LeBron/Barkley dust was going to fully settle after Barkley’s surprisingly level-headed approach, and invoking MJ is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about. I’m already bored with this entire back-and-forth.