Craig Hodges, a former Chicago Bulls basketball player who won the NBA’s three-point shootout for three consecutive seasons while playing for the team, said he was “bothered” by Michael Jordan’s comments about cocaine on “The Last Dance” and is “salty” that he wasn’t interviewed for the documentary.
“One of the things as players we call this a fraternity,” Hodges said during a Tuesday interview with Fox Sports Radio. “So I’m watching the first episode and I was upset about the ‘cocaine circus.'”
Hodges, who played for the Bulls from 1988 to 1992, was referring to Jordan’s response to “Last Dance” director Jason Hehir’s question about the Bulls’ so-called “traveling cocaine circus” during the 1980s. Jordan recounted attending a party during the preseason of his rookie year in 1984 and finding some of his teammates taking lines of cocaine.
“That bothered me because I was thinking about the brothers who are on that picture with you who have to explain to their families who are getting ready to watch this great Michael Jordan documentary event and they know you’re on the team, and now you’ve got to explain that to a 12-year-old boy,” Hodges, who was not a member of the team at the time of the story, said.
Hodges also expressed disagreement with Jordan’s characterization of former Bulls player Scottie Pippen as “selfish” for delaying his foot surgery and missing the first part of the 1997-1998 basketball season, and blaming Horace Grant, who played for the Bulls from 1987-1994, for leaking information about the team to the press.
“Then the Scottie Pippen part. Scottie was ‘selfish’. C’mon man, c’mon,” Hodges said. “And then last night with Horace, that hurt me. I’m letting MJ know that that ain’t right, dude. Horace did not deserve to take the fall for ‘Jordan Rules’. If MJ knows something else and knows Horace’s motive, then tell us how Horace did it for my sake, because I’m your teammate brother, just like they are, and I’m kind of salty how everybody got interviewed but me.”
Hodges has publicly disagreed with Jordan before, including in the early 1990s, when he criticized Nike, a company Jordan has been closely associated with, for unfair labor practices. Hodges wanted Jordan to leave Nike and create his own company that would provide jobs to Chicago residents.
