Watch CBS News

Will Perdue: Michael Jordan Punched Me After 2nd Unit Was 'Kicking Butt'

(CBS) Earlier this week, former Bulls forward Horace Grant joined a New York radio show, and during the wide-ranging interview, he shared the story of a practice in which star Michael Jordan punched backup center Will Perdue in the face.

"Typical Phil (Jackson)," Grant said. "We run this play and Will set an illegal pick on MJ, and MJ said, 'Will, don't do that again.' 'What you talking about,' that's Will. MJ says all right; Phil says run it again. So naturally we run it two more times, illegal pick. MJ walks up to Will — boom. Lit him up. It was over; we grabbed Will — you're not going to hurt MJ. MJ can take care of himself. So the next day on the plane, Will gets on with this huge shiner."

Well, on Wednesday during a segment on CSN Chicago -- for which he serves as a Bulls analyst -- Perdue confirmed the story and then shared more details.

And you have to hand it to Perdue -- he took the revelation in stride and fired back with his take.

Here's what Perdue had to say, based off video from ProBasketballTalk via CSN Chicago:

First of all, the second unit was kicking the first unit's butt, and Michael wasn't too happy about it. And we used to do that actually quite often in practice.

Secondly, we were the scout team running some plays of the team we were going to play the next night, and Johnny Bach was the defensive coach. And what we used to do was run about five high-frequency plays of our opponent.

Well, one of them was they were going to continue to run the screen-roll to see if Michael was going to continue to try to work his way over the screen over four quarters, because they knew the guy coming off the screen was the shooter. Michael didn't want to go under, neither did Phil or Johnny Bach want Michael to go under. So, they are going to want to lay some wood on him, is the terminology, try to knock him off a screen and see, will you continue to do this for four quarters?

So, we kept running this play, and sometimes my screens were illegal. Sometimes they were not. But my job was to make sure I hit him. Well one time he said, 'If you do that again I'm going to make you pay for it.' Well Johnny Bach just stood there and goes, 'Run it again.'

So we ran it again, and this time I figured if I'm going to get my money's worth. I nailed him, knocked him to the ground, kind of stood over him a little bit. He stood up, popped me and before I could get him, they got us and that was the end of it.

He apologized later, but he got me pretty good.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.