The team eventually noticed Drexler’s faux pas, and, as fellow Dream Teamer Chris Mullin tells it, Jordan told Drexler, “that’s kind of why you guys lost to us.” Drexler eventually won championships but never beat his nemesisĢ7 years ago today, Clyde Drexler was traded to the Houston Rockets. She tells a story of Drexler accidentally grabbing two left shoes one day before practice and then wearing them without saying anything, so he didn’t draw Jordan’s barbs.
However, MacMullan paints a different picture. He says it only meant he was ‘a real threat’ to Jordan. Jackie MacMullan on Michael Jordan and Clyde Drexlerĭrexler insists that Jordan’s ire didn’t bother him. … The haranguing became so intense, the coaching staff and some of Jordan’s teammates asked him to dial it back. When the Dream Team gathered for its initial workouts in San Diego, Jordan hounded Clyde on defense, harassed him as Drexler brought the ball up the floor, and reminded him he had kicked his a** just weeks earlier in the Finals. Jordan’s attack mode didn’t stop once he lifted the Larry O’Brien trophy, though:
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In the 1992 Finals, Jordan attacked Drexler all series to make the point about his greatness over the Western Conference star. MacMullan explains that “Drexler’s ‘sin’ was methodically building an MVP season for himself in 1991-92,” which “prompted pundits to suggest he was in close pursuit of MJ as the game’s best player.” While “Drexler never fueled this notion,” that didn’t matter to Jordan. As longtime NBA insider Jackie MacMullan reports in her Icons Club podcast, no relationship on the Dream Team “was more complex than Jordan and Drexler.” This was bad news for Clyde Drexler, the other shooting guard on the team. He may have deferred to elder statesman Magic Johnson and Larry Bird when it came time to pick a team captain, but there was no doubt the Dream Team was Jordan’s team. When this team came together, Michael Jordan was the unquestionable best player in the world. Olympic Men’s Basketball Team, aka the Dream Team, is the greatest team ever assembled in basketball (and possibly any sport’s) history. In Episode 5 of ‘Icons Club,’ Jackie MacMullan details how the Dream Team experienced helped some of the NBA’s biggest rivals form friendships-even Michael Jordan and Clyde Drexler: - The Ringer April 1, 2022 Jordan went after his rival so hard with the Dream Team in 1992 that teammates and coaches stepped in The NBA Finals showdown and the nearly decade-old draft snub were more than enough to put Drexler firmly in Jordan’s crosshairs when Dream Team practices started in the summer of 1992. It doesn’t take much to whip Jordan into a trash-talking frenzy with an opponent. Plus, the team liked the SG it drafted the year before from Houston, Clyde Drexler. Portland wanted size, so it infamously took 7-foot-1 Kentucky center Sam Bowie over Jordan.
The other reason Jordan had extra motivation when he faced Drexler is that the Trail Blazers famously passed on the North Carolina guard at No. That gave Jordan his second NBA title heading into the Dream Team summer. He just couldn’t stop Jordan, who picked it up a notch, pouring in 35.8 points per game in a 4-2 Bulls series win. With stat lines like these, it’s no surprise that Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and Drexler’s Portland Trail Blazers met in the 1992 NBA Finals.ĭrexler played well in that series, scoring right around his season average with 24.8 points per game.
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