Dennis Rodman’s exit from the Detroit Pistons was a deep emotional rupture that nearly swallowed him whole. This was the man who bled for the “Bad Boys,” crashing the glass and taking charges like his soul depended on it.
He had two championships and the Defensive Player of the Year award, yet by the early 1990s, everything had unraveled. “The Worm” had lost his team and identity.
Rodman’s retreat
After head coach Chuck Daly, whom the 6’7″ forward considered a father figure, resigned after the 1991–92 season, that exit hit hard. Rodman retreated inward. For nearly a month, he locked himself inside his house. There was no press, no phone, just silence and the chaos in his mind. He had his reasons.
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“Just trying to figure out what direction I was going,” he said. “It wasn’t a death wish for me, of course. I’m a die because things are going to hell, no. It was more like trying to get things together, pretty much.”
The Pistons dynasty that terrorized the league from 1988 to 1991 had cracked open.
The bruising battles with Jordan’s Bulls, the grindhouse mentality that defined the Daly era, and the brotherhood forged in sweat and blood disintegrated in real time. Rodman’s world tilted, and with no roadmap, he shut down.
His anchor, Coach Daly, was gone. The Pistons were no longer a contender, finishing the 1992–93 season with a 40–42 record, missing the playoffs for the first time since 1983. Off the court, things were no better. His marriage to Annie Bakes, the mother of his daughter Alexis, had collapsed, adding another layer of pain to an already volatile emotional state.
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Rodman wasn’t speaking to many people. He missed training camp. His rebounding numbers were still elite; he averaged 18.3 boards that year, but the fire inside him had dimmed. By February 1993, the darkness was overwhelming. One night, he drove to the Palace of Auburn Hills with a loaded rifle in his truck. He sat there in the silence of the parking lot, wrestling with himself.
The story, which he later shared in “Bad As I Wanna Be,” doesn’t end with tragedy but with a quiet turning point. He fell asleep in the truck. Police, acting on a welfare check requested by a friend, found him there. He didn’t pull the trigger. He woke up. And something shifted.
Related: Andrei Kirilenko was ready to sacrifice millions to escape the Jazz in 2007: “I don’t want to enjoy something that I don’t deserve”
Moving out
By the 1993-94 season, Rodman was no longer in Detroit. He had been traded to the San Antonio Spurs, a franchise worlds away in culture and chemistry. The Spurs weren’t the rough-and-tumble Pistons. They were calm, disciplined, built around the quiet dominance of franchise cornerstone David Robinson.
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But Rodman wasn’t looking to fit in. He was trying to stay alive.
“I am going to persevere in the city or go somewhere else,” he said, reflecting on that moment of change.
Rodman was now fully in the power forward role, and on the hardwood, he went ballistic. He averaged 17.3 rebounds per game, his third consecutive rebounding title and earned another NBA All-Defensive First Team selection. He wasn’t trying to return to the man he used to be in Detroit. He was becoming someone entirely different.
Off the court, his eccentricity exploded — technicolor hair, on-court antics, late-night club runs. San Antonio gave “The Worm” space to evolve or combust, depending on the night. The Spurs made the playoffs that season, and Rodman, despite the friction with coaches and media, made his presence undeniable.
Related: “He had a po’boy pulled down over his sunglasses” – Phil Jackson recalls Dennis Rodman’s bizarre first meeting with Bulls
