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Craig Hodges rips Michael Jordan for ‘cocaine circus’ comments in ‘The Last Dance’

Fittingly, three-time 3-Point Contest champion Craig Hodges came from all the way downtown to call out his former teammate, Michael Jordan. Hodges, who played on the Chicago Bulls in the ’80s and ’90s, apparently has joined the rest of America in watching “The Last Dance,” ESPN’s 10-part docuseries on Jordan and the final year of …

Fittingly, three-time 3-Point Contest champion Craig Hodges came from all the way downtown to call out his former teammate, Michael Jordan.

Hodges, who played on the Chicago Bulls in the ’80s and ’90s, apparently has joined the rest of America in watching “The Last Dance,” ESPN’s 10-part docuseries on Jordan and the final year of the Bulls’ dynasty. However, Hodges wasn’t thrilled with some of the comments Jordan made on the show — specifically, the ones about his early Bulls teams’ illicit drug use.

“One of the things as players we call this a fraternity,” Hodges said during an interview on “The Odd Couple” with Chris Broussard and Rob Parker of Fox Sports Radio. “So I’m watching the first episode and I was upset about the ‘cocaine circus.’ That bothered me because I was thinking about the brothers who are on that picture with you who have to explain to their families who are getting ready to watch this great Michael Jordan documentary event and they know you’re on the team, and now you’ve got to explain that to a 12-year-old boy.”

Craig Hodges, Michael JordanGetty Images

Jordan never actually referred to the team as a “cocaine circus” – that was the interviewer – but he did erupt into laughter when he heard the phrase. He then went on to tell a story about finding his teammates doing drugs in a hotel room during the 1984 preseason.

“I start knocking on doors, I get to this one door, and I could hear someone say, ‘Shhh, someone’s outside,’” Jordan said. “This deep voice says, ‘Who is it?’ I say, ‘It’s MJ,’ and they say, ‘Ah, f–k, he’s just a rookie. Don’t worry about it.’

“So they open up the door. I walk in, and practically the whole team is in there. It was things I had never seen in my life as a young kid. You got your lines over here, you got your weed smokers over here, you got your women over here.”

Hodges didn’t join the team until 1988 and wouldn’t have been implicated in that story, but still took issue with Jordan airing his old teammates’ dirty laundry. He also didn’t like MJ calling Scottie Pippen “selfish” for holding off on surgery during a contract dispute in 1997, nor Jordan blaming Horace Grant for leaking information to writer Sam Smith for his bombshell “Jordan Rules” book.

“Then the Scottie Pippen part. Scottie was ‘selfish’. C’mon man, c’mon,” Hodges said. “And then last night with Horace, that hurt me. I’m letting MJ know that that ain’t right, dude. Horace did not deserve to take the fall for ‘Jordan Rules.’ If MJ knows something else and knows Horace’s motive, then tell us how Horace did it for my sake, because I’m your teammate brother, just like they are, and I’m kind of salty how everybody got interviewed but me.”

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