In June 2001, about four months before Michael Jordan made the third comeback of his storied career by suiting up for his first game with the Wizards, someone broke a couple of MJ’s ribs during a pickup game in Chicago. At the time, MJ wouldn’t say who caused him to sustain the injury, but in a Chicago Tribune story that was published about a week after the initial reports, Metta World Peace—who was still going by Ron Artest back then—was ID’d as the culprit. The report that the Tribune put out actually made it sound like some sort of fight had taken place between MJ and World Peace:
It’s been almost exactly 15 years now since the incident took place, and MJ and World Peace have both stayed quiet with regards to what actually happened. But during a Facebook Live interview that ESPN’s Molly Qerim did with World Peace during his appearance on Mike & Mike on Tuesday morning, a fan inquired about MJ’s broken ribs on FB:
Qerim then asked World Peace about it, and he spent a few moments telling his side of the story. According to him, there was no fight—just good, hard basketball. Here’s what he remembers:
World Peace also touched on how badly he felt about breaking MJ’s ribs:
Check out the 3:30 mark of the video above to hear World Peace talk about the incident. As he mentioned, MJ did go on to have a great 2001-02 season, but do you think he’s still salty about what took place?
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