Magic Johnson believes it was the rivalry with the ‘Bad Boys’ Detroit Pistons that made Michael Jordan the greatest player of all time.
Jordan and the Chicago Bulls swept Isiah Thomas and the Pistons in the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals after losing to Detroit in three straight postseasons. The Bulls won six championships during the ’90s while the Pistons never got back to the Finals.
“The Bulls kept trying to go through the Pistons and Isiah [Thomas] denied them but it made the Bulls the championship-winning team that they were.
They [the Pistons] took a lot of cheap shots. I can understand why Michael was so upset. The great thing is that the Pistons made Michael Jordan be the GOAT [greatest of all time]. The reason he became the GOAT is because he had to go through the Pistons,” Johnson told NBC’s Today on Monday, via Dan Cancian of Newsweek.
