Dennis Rodman: I wanted to kill the follower I was becoming
Dennis Rodman won multiple titles with multiple teams in his time in the NBA. But the Hall of Famer has previously said that he almost took his own life in 1993. In an interview previously recorded in 2011 that is set to broadcast on network television for the first time this weekend, Rodman discussed his struggles as the Detroit Pistons team with which he won two championships started to fall apart:
The thoughts were going through my head, yes, absolutely. I just wanted to kill that individual. Not Dennis Rodman, just the individual because I was too much of a follower… I think the circumstances [were] the fact that everyone was dispersing from Detroit. I think that the organization started to get rid of some key people of the team… There was no more cohesiveness as far as a family thing, and so I was basically by myself I thought.
Rodman went on to play alongside Michael Jordan as a member of the Bulls from 1995-98, but he didn't necessarily see the value in off-court camaraderie with his teammates.
In a second clip from the same interview with Yahoo, Rodman explained the reason why he never had a conversation with Jordan or Scottie Pippen off the court at any time while they were on the same team.
“I didn’t think it was important. I thought it was important for me to go there and win… I don’t have to have a job to speak to people. My job is to correlate and understand how people work and do one thing and make people believe the fact that you belong there. You know, talking to people will come. Relating to people will come. If they see you performing and doing your job and being with the group, that’s all I want… Me and Scottie and Michael [Jordan] never had a conversation in three years in Chicago. Only time we had a conversation was on the court.”
Rodman also talked about his relationship with Madonna -- "I could've married her" -- and some of his more sensitive piercings:
“Did you really get your scrotum pierced?”
Rodman: “Mmm hmm… I’ll tell you. You wanna know, I’ll tell you… Once you’ve had so much pain in your life, you put pain in your body… I went through a pain-driven year. And the more pain I got, the more driven I got.”
