{"id":567315,"date":"2020-04-30T18:15:58","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T22:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/?p=567315"},"modified":"2020-04-30T18:16:00","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T22:16:00","slug":"craig-ehlo-i-never-said-i-was-a-jordan-stopper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/news\/nba\/craig-ehlo-i-never-said-i-was-a-jordan-stopper\/","title":{"rendered":"Craig Ehlo: &#8216;I Never Said I Was a Jordan Stopper&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/tag\/craig-ehlo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Craig Ehlo<\/a> never claimed to be a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/tag\/michael-jordan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jordan<\/a> &#8220;stopper,&#8221; so it came as a total shock to him when former Cavs teammate <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/tag\/ron-harper\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Ron Harper<\/a> lamented that he didn&#8217;t get the defensive assignment on Michael prior to &#8220;The Shot.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MJ, of course, hung in the air over a helpless Ehlo and knocked in an iconic buzzer-beater to eliminate Cleveland from the 1989 NBA playoffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&quot;I don\u2019t really remember him during our time wanting to play defense that much&quot; <br><br>Part 1 of a lengthy conversation with Craig Ehlo and Mark Price after reliving The Shot during &quot;The Last Dance&quot; and their view of Ron Harper&#39;s comments<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/nVWLI86Uqi\">https:\/\/t.co\/nVWLI86Uqi<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Chris Fedor (@ChrisFedor) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChrisFedor\/status\/1255572750699200512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 29, 2020<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Harper, who eventually won championships alongside Jordan in Chicago, &#8220;had never really talked about defense or guarding people,&#8221; says Ehlo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Per <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cleveland.com\/cavs\/2020\/04\/last-dance-debate-craig-ehlo-mark-price-dont-remember-ron-harper-asking-to-guard-michael-jordan-before-the-shot-shocked-by-harpers-comments.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Cleveland.com<\/a><\/em>: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><em>One thing Ehlo doesn\u2019t remember: Ron Harper\u2019s version, which he relayed in Episode 3 of \u201cThe Last Dance\u201d &#8212; a hit ESPN documentary that chronicles the Chicago Bulls\u2019 quest for a sixth NBA championship in 1998.<\/em><\/p><p><em>\u201cI never said I was a Jordan stopper like Gerald Wilkins or anything,\u201d Ehlo said during an extensive call with cleveland.com this week. \u201cBut back then Harp and me were on the court at the same time and he was our big offensive threat. So, when I came in it was a no-brainer that I would guard Jordan so Harp could rest on defense and play on offense.<\/em><\/p><p><em>\u201cHarp had never really talked about defense or guarding people. He wasn\u2019t a bad defender, I will give him that much, but I think those years with the Bulls where he got those championships, he was definitely third or fourth fiddle, so all of a sudden he becomes this lockdown defender, apparently. I don\u2019t really remember him during our time wanting to play defense that much. He kind of shocked me with those comments, saying he wanted to guard Michael.\u201d<\/em><\/p><p><em>On Sunday night, Harper openly questioned coach Lenny Wilkens\u2019 polarizing decision to use Ehlo as the primary defender on the final play &#8212; a clip that has since gone viral.<\/em><\/p><p><em>\u201cWe\u2019re up by one and I said, \u2018Coach I got MJ,\u2019&#8221; Harper explained. \u201cCoach tells me, \u2018I\u2019m going to put Ehlo on MJ.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018Yeah, OK, whatever. F**k this bullshit.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Related <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/nba\/agent-michael-jordan-would-average-between-50-and-60-today\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Agent: Michael Jordan Would Average \u2018Between 50 and 60\u2019 Today<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Craig Ehlo never claimed to be a Jordan &#8220;stopper,&#8221; so it came as a total shock to him when former Cavs teammate Ron Harper lamented that he didn&#8217;t get the defensive assignment on Michael prior to &#8220;The Shot.&#8221; MJ, of course, hung in the air over a helpless Ehlo and knocked in an iconic buzzer-beater [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":567313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,62493],"tags":[13005,13006,10307,4273,62523,783,3718,49753],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-567315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","category-newswire","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-craig-ehlo","tag-lenny-wilkens","tag-mantle","tag-michael-jordan","tag-ron-harper","tag-the-last-dance"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567315"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":567321,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567315\/revisions\/567321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567315"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slamonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=567315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}