{"id":471087,"date":"2026-02-10T18:00:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T18:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/471087\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T18:00:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T18:00:08","slug":"dont-you-ever-stack-the-team-against-me-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/471087\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t You Ever Stack The Team Against Me Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Jordan\u2019s first NBA retirement lasted from 1993 to 1995, but he did actually suit up for one notable basketball game during that time, the Scottie Pippen Ameritech All-Star Classic. Scottie Pippen<\/a> had organized the game for charity on Sept. 9, 1994, and a host of NBA players were taking part.<\/p>\n

John Starks<\/a> was one of them, and he revealed during an appearance on the 7PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony<\/a> podcast that Jordan<\/a> wasn\u2019t all too happy with Pippen that night.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe played in Scottie Pippen\u2019s charity game, and this is the first time I got a chance to play with him,\u201d Starks said. \u201cSo Scottie had put me and him on the same team, and Scottie had kind of stacked his team a little bit. And I remember Mike coming out of the locker room, he looking at the team, and he said, \u2018Just pass me the ball.\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cMind you, he\u2019s been playing baseball,\u201d Starks continued. \u201cHe been playing baseball the whole time. Man, he came out there and scorched Scottie. Him and Scottie was just on the island by themselves and everybody just moved to the side. Oh, man. He scorched Scottie. I think he had like 50-something points. He walked up to Scottie and told him, \u2018Don\u2019t you ever stack the team against me again,\u2019 and walked off the court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jordan would score 52 points (24-46 FG) to lead his Team White to a 187-150 win over Pippen\u2019s Team Red. Keep in mind that at that point, he had last played in an NBA game for the Chicago Bulls<\/a> against the Phoenix Suns<\/a> on June 20, 1993, in the Finals. That\u2019s almost 15 months during which he was busy playing baseball, and still managed to put on that kind of a show.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Pippen, meanwhile, led his team with 24 points. It was clear who won that matchup.<\/p>\n

When you look at some of the players on these teams, though, it\u2019s hard to throw stacking accusations at Pippen.<\/p>\n

According to UPI<\/a>, the White team included Jordan, Starks, Penny Hardaway<\/a>, Gary Payton<\/a>, Mitch Richmond, Vernon Maxwell<\/a>, and Charles Oakley<\/a>. On the other side were the likes of Pippen, Toni Kukoc<\/a>, Ron Harper<\/a>, BJ Armstrong, Nick Anderson, and Antonio Davis. The White team sure looks stronger.<\/p>\n

This charity contest was the last game played at the Chicago Stadium. The Bulls moved to the United Center at the start of the 1994-95 season, but the debut campaign wasn\u2019t going quite according to plan.<\/p>\n

Pippen\u2019s Bulls were barely above .500 at 34-31 when Jordan announced on March 18, 1995, that he was quitting baseball and coming back. The team would finish 47-35 with him, but would lose to the Orlando Magic<\/a> in six games in the Eastern Conference Semifinals.<\/p>\n

That would prove to be the last playoff series defeat of Jordan\u2019s career. He and the Bulls would three-peat from 1996 to 1998. It was the second time in the decade that they\u2019d pulled that off, having won three in a row from 1991 to 1993.<\/p>\n

Jordan then retired for the second time in 1998, but came back again in 2001 to play for the Washington Wizards<\/a>. He\u2019d spend two seasons with the Wizards and then retire for the third and final time in 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Jordan\u2019s first NBA retirement lasted from 1993 to 1995, but he did actually suit up for one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-471087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}