Horace Grant has admitted Michael Jordan tried keeping food away from him after he perceived his performance during a certain game to have been poor.
Sam Smith, a journalist and author of The Jordan Rules, claimed he was told Jordan told stewardesses not to feed Grant in-flight as he’d performed badly in a game the Chicago Bulls had just finished playing.
“Players would come to me over the years and said, ‘You know what he did? He took Horace’s food away on the plane because Horace had a bad game,” Smith told KNBR earlier this month. “[Michael] told the stewardesses ‘Don’t feed him, he doesn’t deserve to eat.”
Grant spoke to ESPN 1000 in Chicago on Tuesday and confirmed Jordan did say the above to a stewardess but added he immediately stood up to his then-teammate with some “choice words.”
“Anybody [who] knows me, as a rookie, if anybody comes up and tries to snatch my food away, I’m going to do my best to beat their a**,” Grant declared. “And believe me, back then, I could have took MJ in a heartbeat. Yes, it’s true that he told the flight attendant, ‘Well, don’t give him anything because he played like crap.’ And I went right back at him.
“I said some choice words that I won’t repeat on here. But I said some choice words and stood up. ‘If you want it, you come and get it.’ And of course, he didn’t move. He was just barking. But that was the story. But anybody [who] knows me, where I come from and what I stand for, come on, man. There’s nobody on this earth would ever come and try to take food off my plate and not get their rear ends beaten.”
