"I don't think Luc had the mentality of what it took to win" - Michael Jordan on why he had to show Luc Longley "tough love" originally appeared on Basketball Network .
If there is one thing we know about Michael Jordan by now, it is that he is competitive. Okay, to be frank, he is even more than that, probably the most competitive basketball player of all time.
It wasn't just about winning games; it was about setting an uncompromising standard and making sure everyone around him rose to that level. Because, for Jordan, playing for anything less than a championship would be a waste, to say the least.
So when new faces started arriving in the Chicago Bulls dynasty of the 1990s, MJ made sure to give them a taste of what it was really going to be like.
And one of those new faces quickly learned what the prime "Jordan experience" truly meant.
The one who got this, as Jordan himself called it, "tough love," was Luc Longley. The Australian big man arrived in Chicago in 1994 via a trade from the Minnesota Timberwolves , a 7'2" center who, on paper, brought size and passing that could complement the Bulls' system. However, it didn't mean much to Jordan if the man in question wasn't willing to show that he had the right attitude towards winning. So, he went to work and showed him what the Bulls basketball was all about.
"I don't think Luc had the mentality of what it took to win. I felt the need to push him," Jordan recalled . "You had to show him a little tough love, you know. That's what I call it – tough love."
"I knew he was capable. We all felt he was capable. But you have to be capable every single night for us to maintain success. So I pushed him for us to maintain success. And verbally, you know, I would challenge him in certain situations where I felt like, 'Luc, you're just not doing what we expect you to do,'" the arguably greatest player of all time added.
That was MJ's version of leadership. Demanding. Direct. And, as Longley, among many others, would learn, completely unapologetic.
What started as a rocky relationship eventually turned into mutual respect. Jordan's tough love wasn't meant to break Longley; it was meant to make him better. And it did.
The Aussie may have never been the guy who could single-handedly change the course of a game, but he became much more than just a complementary piece in that second Bulls three-peat.
In 1997 and 1998, Longley started all 39 playoff games during the Bulls' final two title seasons. He wasn't there to dominate the game with his one-of-a-kind scoring; rather, he was there to anchor the defense and give them a reliable presence in the tense moments of playoff battles.
Even though the Australian center and the man many consider the GOAT didn't click at first , they formed a partnership built on accountability and mutual respect.
"I think Mike was doing what he did to rookies, what he was doing to me," Longley once said . "He was just testing me, seeing where my boundaries were, seeing which buttons he could push, how he could drive me and I probably saw through that and didn't want to take the bait, so we had a few clashes."
Jordan's tough love may have been hard to take at times, but it helped mold Luc Longley into the piece Chicago needed to close out their dynasty. And in the end, that's all that mattered.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Aug 6, 2025, where it first appeared.
