This is not surprising at all.
Malone was already planning to get that WCW money, so he and Rodman worked up a little side angle during the NBA Finals to carry over to the WCW.
Rodman had started the angle by leaving in the middle of the NBA Finals to join the NWO. Eric Bischoff picks up the story from there.
Bischoff admits he encouraged Rodman to mix it up with Malone — but not in any way that would affect the outcome of the game.
“Now, what I said to Dennis, not to Karl was, ‘Hey Dennis, if anything were to happen off court while there’s a timeout, while there’s no gameplay … so that the feud between Karl Malone and Dennis Rodman is real, on a kind of a 360-degree basis, not just what happens on our TV show,’ that wouldn’t piss me off at all.”
In other words, Bischoff says he didn’t give a direct order — but didn’t talk Dennis out of it either.
Bischoff also tells TMZ Sports he made sure both his boss at Turner Sports and the NBA knew that the Rodman vs. Malone story “didn’t interrupt the gameplay.”
If you recall Rodman and Malone did get into in the Finals.
Flip the page for that as well their match at the PPV.