Gary Peyton reacted to Michael Jordan’s wry laughter

It’s been two years since The Last Dance was released, and even today, one of the highlights of the documentary is Michael Jordan’s wry laugh as he hears Gary Payton say he did well at the 1996 NBA Finals. Speaking about MJ’s reaction for the first time, Glove stood by his opinion and admitted he had no problem as “That’s Jordan and that’s what he’s supposed to do“.

Details of what Gary Peyton said:

“I think George Carl tried to support me because I had a calf injury. In the fourth game we lost 3-0 and I told him to let me mark him without worrying about me. I told him I would find the solution, I told him I would limit it. We knew we could stop him and I restricted him. We won the next two games.

I made everything difficult for him, I didn’t allow him to be comfortable on the ground. I made it clear to him that he had to give Pipen the ball and he got angry. I had to do that. When he tagged me as I was posting him, they put pipes on me to bring the ball back to the periphery. Jordan didn’t like that, he wanted him to get the challenge. He said what he had to say, even laughing in his documentary. I don’t care, he said what he had to say. This is Mike Jordan. I respect him for that and have no problem with that.

We didn’t play to win the final, we played to survive. It was first team, we were second team, we had shared regular season wins, we beat them in Seattle, they beat us in Chicago. We were scared, George Carl knows that, that was our biggest mistake“.