Can you imagine this happening in 2017?
The hot takes would be flying. As Brown gets ready to play in Ice Cube’s Big 3 league he wanted to set the record straight on some things.
Brown had become maddeningly frustrated, a kid who thought that he was being repeatedly fouled in intrasquad games. He would drive toward the basket and feel himself being bumped by a hard hip off the ball, infuriated that the referees wouldn’t blow a whistle. “That was a foul,” he finally groaned.
There was an electric silence then. Play had stopped. A wide-eyed Jordan walked toward Brown. “You [expletive] flaming [homophobic slur],” he exploded. “You don’t get a foul call on a [expletive] little touch foul, you [expletive]. Get your [expletive] back on the floor and play. I don’t want to hear that out of you again. Get your ass back and play, you [expletive].”
As a leader Jordan proved more tormentor than mentor. Many Washington players got the business end of a Jordan harangue, but he designated second-year forward Kwame Brown as the whipping boy, referring to him, as reported by The Washington Post, as a “flaming [slur].” A source told SI that Jordan ritually reduced Brown to tears in front of the team.
This meshes with what a lot of people who aren’t wrapped up in the myth of Jordan says about him. Basically he was a mean person.
Kwame wanted to clear the air though.
“Michael has never brought me to tears,” he said. “Did he upset me a lot? Yeah. I mean, he’s a competitor.”
And it’s sad that it got to this point, but where are the Xs and Os? Where is the numbers at? Everyone says I can’t play, but no one has my numbers when I do play. There’s no outlet that I look at now [where] it’s not about this guy [debating] this guy, this guy talking that loud, this guy’s talking louder. Where are the numbers?”
Kwame Brown averaged 6 points and 5 rebounds in his 12 year NBA career.
Flip the page for video about him speaking about the Michael Jordan crying incident…