Horace Grant was a participant in The Last Dance after winning three NBA titles with Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, but that didn’t stop him from criticizing the documentary.
“Lie, lie, lie” Grant said during a Tuesday radio interview with Kap & Co. on Chicago’s ESPN 1000. His biggest gripe derives from episode 6 of the series, when Jordan claimed Grant was the main culprit in leaking information for Sam Smith’s ’92 book The Jordan Rules.
“As I stated to everybody, that is a downright, outright, complete lie. Lie, lie, lie. And as I stated, if MJ has a grudge with me, let’s talk about it or we can settle it another way. But yet still, he goes out and puts this lie out that I was the source,” Grant told Kap & Co. “Sam and I have always been great friends. We still are great friends. But the sanctity of that locker room, I would never put anything personal out there. The mere fact that Sam Smith was an investigative reporter, that he had to have two sources to write a book, why would MJ just point me out, OK? It’s only a grudge man, I’m telling you.”
Grant disparaged Jordan’s inability to accept criticism, highlighting his deteriorated relationship with Charles Barkley. Jordan and Barkley were close friends for decades, but as Grant noted, the two have not spoken since Chuck commented on Michael’s management of the Charlotte Hornets.
Grant also turned the table on Jordan, pointing a finger at him for being a “snitch.”
“And my point is, he said that I was the snitch, but yet and still after 35 years he brings up his rookie year going into one of his teammates’ rooms and seeing coke, and weed and women. My point is: Why the hell did he want to bring that up? What’s that got to do with anything? I mean, if you want to call somebody a snitch, that’s a damn snitch right there.”
Grant’s “snitch” claim was referring to episode 1 of the series, when Jordan called the Bulls a “traveling cocaine circus,” before he arrived.
Overall, Grant wasn’t satisfied with the docuseries because it was a mostly one-sided story, calling “about 90% of it…B.S. in terms of the realness of it.”
“It wasn’t real,” Grant continued. “Because a lot of things [Jordan] said to some of his teammates, that his teammates went back at him. But all of that was kind of edited out of the documentary, if you want to call it a documentary.”
While The Last Dance was an immensely successful series for ESPN, most of its criticisms stem from Jordan having editorial control over the doc. Grant kept referring to it as a “so-called documentary” which he was asked to expand on during his interview with Kap & Co.
“It’s [Jordan’s] narrative of what happens in the last, quote-unquote, dance. That’s not a documentary, because a whole bunch of things was cut out, edited out. So that’s why I call it a so-called documentary.”
Brandon Contes is a former reporter for BSM, now working for Awful Announcing. You can find him on Twitter @BrandonContes or reach him by email at Brandon.Contes@gmail.com.
