How Dennis Rodman Was Forced To Apologize To Larry Bird Over Racial Comments In 1987
Adam Zagoria - Contributor
When Dennis Rodman was forced to apologize to Scottie Pippen for violently shoving Pippen into a basket stanchion during the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals, that wasn’t the first time he was forced into apologizing to a big-name NBA star.
Four years before the Pippen incident — and eight years before Phil Jackson told Rodman to apologize to Pippen before he joined the Chicago Bulls in 1995 — Rodman in 1987 was told to apologize to Larry Bird for racial comments, according to Rodman’s former agent Billy Diamond.
While the Rodman/Pippen apology has been featured in ESPN’s The Last Dance, the Rodman/Bird apology is uncovered territory.
After the Pistons were eliminated by Bird and the Celtics in Game 7 of the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals, Rodman was asked in the locker room about Bird’s performance and, according to a New York Times account from the time, said Bird was “very overrated” and that he had won three straight MVP awards only ''because he was white.''
Isiah Thomas, told of Rodman's remarks, said he ''had to agree with'' him. ''Larry Bird is a very, very good basketball player. I think he’s an exceptional talent,'' Thomas said. ''But I’d have to agree with Rodman, if he was black he'd be just another good guy.” Thomas later said his comments were meant sarcastically, that he was friendly with Bird and that he had great respect for him.
Diamond, 59, has been a high school and college coach in New Jersey for 25 years. He recalls for the first time what happened next in terms of Rodman.
“I got a call after the game around 1 a.m. from a sportswriter I knew who said, “You’re never going to believe what your client just said in the lockerroom’” Diamond recalled.
This was in the pre-Internet era so it would have taken at least until the next morning’s newspapers for Rodman and Thomas’ comments to circulate widely. Diamond wasn’t able to get Rodman on the phone at that late hour, so he called him at about 9 the next morning from his office in Washington, D.C. where he was a vice president with Bill Pollak Professional Management Associates.
“Did you really say that or were you misquoted?” Diamond, then 27, asked his client.
“No, I said it,” Diamond recalls Rodman saying.
“Do you actually believe that?” Diamond asked.
‘Yeah,” Rodman said, per Diamond.
“Are you f***ing crazy?” Diamond retorted. “The guy is one of the top five players in the league and is going to go down as one of the top players ever to play in the league.”
“Well, Isiah said it, too.”
“Who gives a sh** what he thinks,” Diamond said. “Nobody cares about his opinion. He sounds just as dumb as you. Do you realize that everyone in the country who’s reading that this morning is laughing at you?” ◦
Diamond added: “You’re going to issue an apology now. We’re going to release a statement.”
“No, I’m not,” Rodman said, according to Diamond.
“Yes, you are. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. I’m going to write it up now and I’ll read it to you when I’m done. Then it’s going out.”
Then Diamond hung up the phone and called a person he knew in the NBA PR department who was already in Los Angeles setting up for the Finals between the Celtics and the Lakers. Diamond told them Rodman was going to issue a statement apologizing to Bird and it was going to be faxed over within the hour. Diamond said he also notified then-Pistons PR director Matt Dobek.
“I’d asked it be placed on the media table in the hospitality room before the Lakers practice,” Diamond recalled of the apology.
“I wanted to make sure the media read the apology before practice and it was reported the day after he said it and written in the paper the the following day, which was the day of Game 1 of the NBA Finals. I wanted to get ahead of this and make sure it was a non-issue and didn’t carry over into the Finals.”
Added Diamond: “The media read his apology that morning and began getting comments from the Lakers and other people around the league about it. Isiah never came right out with an official apology and the outrage built up so much he had to fly out to L.A. and hold a press conference a week later on the afternoon of Game 2.”
“If Isiah tells me that it was in a joking matter, I think we should leave it at that,” Bird said at the press conference.
In addition to holding a joint press conference with Bird to address his comments, Thomas went on the air with Brent Musberger during halftime of Game 2 to explain his comments.
Thomas’ rocky relationships with Bird, Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson appear to have led to him being left off the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, which he has said personally hurts’ him to this day.
For his part, Rodman never had to defend himself, in part because Diamond got the apology out quickly.
Ironically, after the 1991 incident involving Rodman and Pippen, another person ghost-wrote an apology for Rodman, too. This was four years after the Rodman-Bird-Thomas dustup.
According ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan’s story, the Pistons’ Dobek drafted an open letter from Rodman to Pippen and the Bulls apologizing for his actions in 1991. According to MacMullan’s account, “Dobek urged Rodman to sign it so he could release it to both the Chicago and Detroit media.”
"I didn't write that thing, and I didn't want to sign it," Rodman told MacMullan. "I felt it was a sign of weakness on my part, and a sign of weakness of the Bad Boys. But eventually I did it."
While the initial incident and the half-hearted apology fueled bad blood between Rodman and Pippen, Rodman has gone on to praise Pippen profusely.
“At that time, people were calling Larry Bird the quintessential forward," Rodman told MacMullan. "He was great, but he couldn't play multiple positions like Scottie could. He wasn't agile enough. I just don't think people realize what Scottie was doing in 1991.
"He revolutionized the point-forward position. All these players today should thank Scottie Pippen. Guys like Kevin Durant should say, 'Wow, look what you did for us.' Scottie could handle, he could shoot the ball, he could defend, he could rebound.
"If LeBron was playing during the '90s, I'd still say Scottie Pippen was the second-best player behind Michael."
Looking back more than 30 years on the situation with Bird, Diamond said:
“At least Dennis was honest about the way he felt, as ridiculous and ignorant as it was for a 26-year-old, naive rookie. I’ve never had any reason to believe at that time, or 33 years later, Isiah wasn’t being honest when he repeated and added to the comments Dennis made. Dennis was forced to apologized 12 hours after he made his comments. Maybe it took 84 more hours for Isiah to be forced to make his apology, too.”
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