Dennis Rodman Never Talked To Michael Jordan Off The Court

Two key subtexts activated when Dennis Rodman joined the Chicago Bulls in 1995 – could he and the team bury any lingering hard feelings from the brutal late ’80s Bulls-Pistons playoff matches, and could he get along with the team’s established, no-nonsense alpha dogs Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.

Three straight NBA championship wins from 1996 to 1998 answered the first concern, but the second was always a little unclear. Though the trio never broke out into a brawl on-court nor engaged in any newspaper-headlining public spats, Jordan and Pippen never seemed Rodman’s best pals.

And, as Rodman explains in an upcoming episode of In Depth with Graham Bensinger, that was due in large part to the fact he never talked to either of them off-court.

The Hall of Fame rebounding legend details that aside from conferring about plays and game minutiae in the heat of the battle, he simply punched the clock when it came to chatting Chicago’s star duo.

“My job is to correlate and understand how people work and do one thing and make people believe the fact that you belong there,” Rodman said. “You know, talking to people will come. Relating to people will come. If they see you performing and doing your job and being with the group, that’s all I want…Me and Scottie and Michael never had a conversation in three years in Chicago. Only time we had a conversation was on the court.”

He yukked it up with Jud Buechler and Randy Brown, though.

Watch the full clip from In Depth with Graham Bensinger here.