Michael Jordan Allegedly Lied About Wanting To Return To Bulls

Story By TJ McMichael May 23rd, 2020

Michael Jordan claimed that he wanted to return to Chicago for one more year.Michael Jordan's exploits in the NBA were on full display during all 10 episodes of "The Last Dance." Of course, Jordan was one of those players who stopped at nothing when it came to wanting to be great and he always knew how to motivate the people around him to make them better, even if his methods were downright cruel.
One of the biggest narratives from the documentary was how he decided to retire in 1998. In the doc, Jordan claims that had Jerry Krause kept the team together, he would have come back for one more year. According to Sam Smith who wrote the book "Jordan Rules," this is complete BS, as he noted in a radio interview.

“That was a complete and blatant lie by Michael,” Smith said. “There were several things in the documentary that I saw, I would know, that he made up or he lied about. They weren’t major things, but it was like when a TV movie comes on and they say, ‘this is based on a true story.’ That’s what that was. It was based on a true story.”

There was a lot of controversy surrounding the "Jordan Rules" book and Jordan wasn't a fan of his teammates "snitching" on him. Regardless, Smith is a reputable journalist so his comments seem to be a direct counter to what Jordan is saying in the documentary.
Perhaps we will never know the whole truth.