Clyde Drexler on facing Michael Jordan: 'This is a team game' - Rockets Wire

Though ESPN’s “The Last Dance” played up the early 1990s rivalry between guards Michael Jordan and Clyde Drexler, the former Houston Rockets and Portland Trail Blazers star isn’t interested in that angle.

In showing highlights of the 1992 NBA Finals matchup between Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and Drexler’s Trail Blazers, Jordan said on the film that he was “offended” by pre-series comparisons to Drexler.

“I’m not saying [Clyde] wasn’t a threat,” Jordan said on the documentary. “But me being compared to him, I took offense to that.” Jordan went on to average 35.8 points per game on 52.6% shooting in the best-of-seven series, which his Bulls won in six games.

Since then, in an appearance this week with Rockets flagship radio station SportsTalk 790, Drexler shared his side of the story:

This is a team game, it’s not one guy. You can have 50 points and 40 rebounds, but if you lose, are you less of a player than anybody on the other team? No, it’s a team game. So I hate when people act like it’s an individual competition. I didn’t take 35 shots and get 20 free throws a night, so I wasn’t going to score 40 points a night.

Drexler said he didn’t watch the Jordan-focused documentary, because he had seen enough from his time as a player. He explains:

I lived it. That’s Michael’s documentary of course it’s going to be from his perspective. It was a golden era, and everybody is entitled to their own opinion.

In that era, there were nothing but men, real men who played. A lot of times guys didn’t like each other from other teams, but as you get older, you’ve got to get beyond all of that and show some love and some respect for the people you played with and against. I hope Michael was able to do that in his documentary.

Drexler did hold his own in the 1992 Finals, averaging 24.8 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 5.3 assists per game against Jordan and the Bulls.

Though “The Glide” didn’t win the championship with the Trail Blazers, he had the right team around him three years later — when Drexler helped lead the Rockets to their second NBA title in 1995.

Later in the SportsTalk 790 interview, Drexler took issue with the recent debates flowing out of “The Last Dance” about whether Michael Jordan or LeBron James is the greatest NBA player of all-time. From the Hall of Famer’s perspective, the list should be more comprehensive.

“I have a real problem with that,” said Drexler, who still works today as a game analyst on a part-time basis for the Rockets. He elaborated:

For all these guys who played the game, for you to have a conversation, are these two guys the GOAT when you got Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, two of the greatest players that ever lived? You start with those two.”

And then you’ve got guys like Dr. J [Julius Irving], Larry Bird, George Gervin, Elgin Baylor, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West… all those guys are in the conversation. For people bringing this up today, to me, it’s unbelievable. And I love Michael and LeBron, but let’s not take something away from those other guys who played.

The complete conversation between Drexler and hosts Adam Clanton and Adam Wexler can be listened to below.