SLAM: June, ‘96. The NBA Finals. You were at the top of your game. Perhaps only Michael Jordan was playing at a higher level, going on to win regular-season, All-Star Game and Finals MVP awards that season. For a brief moment though, His Airness seemed mortal. In Games 4 and 5, you were the kryptonite to the Chicago Bulls’ Superman.
GP: We were down 3-0 in the series, so I went to Coach Karl and said, Give me a shot at covering Jordan. What did we have to lose? I would have picked up Jordan on defense earlier in the series, but I had a half-torn calf muscle, an injury from the previous series against the Jazz. It wasn’t reported at the time but I was really slowed down by the injury. I made Jordan guard me, made him play both D and O. I knew he was pissed that I was given the cover of Sports Illustrated before the Finals. He hoped to avenge the SI snub by showing me up, so he wanted to cover me to try and stop me. And I was scoring. Covering me took a toll on him. And Jordan wouldn’t get all the favorable calls if I was covering him—I would get some respect from the referees being an All-Star myself. The strategy got us to Game 6, but that was as far as we went.
SLAM: That Finals represented Jordan’s lowest shooting percentage and scoring average in his six trips to the Finals. What was the secret to stopping him in a way no one had ever done before?
GP: The truth is, I just forgot about how he was the greatest to ever play the game. As I said to Coach Karl at the time, Let me do this and I will find a way to get it done.
