Background and career
Dennis Keith Rodman (born May 13, 1961) is an American former professional basketball player, professional wrestler, and actor. Renowned for his defensive and rebounding abilities, his biography on the official NBA website states that he is "arguably the best rebounding forward in NBA history". Nicknamed "the Worm", he played for the Detroit Pistons, San Antonio Spurs, Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers, and Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Rodman played at the small forward position in his early years before becoming a power forward. He earned NBA All-Defensive First Team honors seven times and won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award twice. He also led the NBA in rebounds per game for a record seven consecutive years and won five NBA championships. On April 1, 2011, the Pistons retired Rodman's No. 10 jersey, and he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame later that year. In October 2021, Rodman was honored as one of the league's greatest players of all-time by being named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team. Rodman experienced an unhappy childhood and was often described as shy and introverted in his early years. After contemplating suicide in 1993, he reinvented himself as a "bad boy" and became notorious for numerous controversial antics. He repeatedly dyed his hair in artificial colors, had many piercings and tattoos, and regularly disrupted games by clashing with opposing players and officials. He famously wore a wedding dress to promote his 1996 autobiography Bad as I Wanna Be. Rodman also attracted international attention for his visits to North Korea and his subsequent befriending of the North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un in 2013. In addition to being a former professional basketball player, Rodman has appeared in professional wrestling. He was a member of the nWo and fought alongside Hulk Hogan in the main event of two Bash at the Beach pay-per-views. In professional wrestling, Rodman was the first-ever winner of the Celebrity Championship Wrestling tournament. He had his own TV show, The Rodman World Tour, and had starring roles in the action films Double Team (1997) and Simon Sez (1999). He appeared in several reality TV series and was the winner of the $222,000 main prize of the 2004 edition of Celebrity Mole.
Rodman was born in Trenton, New Jersey, the son of Shirley and Philander Rodman, Jr., an Air Force enlisted member, who later fought in the Vietnam War. When he was young, his father left his family, eventually settling in the Philippines. Rodman has many brothers and sisters: according to his father, he has either 26 or 28 siblings on his father's side. However, Rodman has stated that he is the oldest of a total of 47 children. After his father left, Shirley took many odd jobs to support the family, up to four at the same time. In his 1996 biography Bad As I Wanna Be, he expresses his feelings for his father: "I haven't seen my father in more than 30 years, so what's there to miss ... I just look at it like this: Some man brought me into this world. That doesn't mean I have a father". He would not meet his father again until 2012. Rodman and his two sisters, Debra and Kim, grew up in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, at the time one of the most impoverished areas of the city. Rodman's mother gave him the nickname "The Worm" for how he wiggles while playing pinball. Rodman was so attached to his mother that he refused to move when she sent him to a nursery when he was four years old. According to Rodman, his mother was more interested in his two sisters, who were both considered more talented than he was in basketball and made him a laughingstock whenever he tagged along with them. He felt generally "overwhelmed" by the all-female household. Debra and Kim would go on to become All-Americans at Louisiana Tech and Stephen F. Austin, respectively. Debra won two national titles with the Lady Techsters. While attending South Oak Cliff High School, Rodman was a gym class student of future Texas A&M basketball coach Gary Blair. Blair coached Rodman's sisters Debra and Kim, winning three state championships. However, Rodman was not considered an athletic standout. According to Rodman, he was "unable to hit a layup" and was listed in the high school basketball teams but was either benched or cut from the squads. Measuring only 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) as a freshman in high school, he also failed to make the football teams and was "totally devastated".
After finishing high school, Rodman worked as an overnight janitor at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. He then experienced a sudden growth spurt from 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m) to 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m) and decided to try basketball again, despite becoming even more withdrawn because he felt odd in his own body. A family friend tipped off the head coach of Cooke County College (now North Central Texas College) in Gainesville, Texas. In his single semester there, he averaged 17.6 points and 13.3 rebounds, before flunking out due to poor academic performance. After his short stint in Gainesville, he transferred to Southeastern Oklahoma State University, an NAIA school. There, Rodman was a three-time NAIA All-American and led the NAIA in rebounding twice (1985, 1986). In three seasons there (1983–1986), he averaged 25.7 points and 15.7 rebounds, and registered a .637 field goal percentage. In 1986 he led his team to the NAIA semifinals where he scored 46 points in a single game, while grabbing a tournament-tying record 32 rebounds, as they finished the season with the highest ranking in school history, at No. 3 in the nation. This helped get him invited to the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, a pre-draft camp for NBA hopefuls, where he won Most Valuable Player honors and caught the attention of the Detroit Pistons. During college, Rodman worked at a summer youth basketball camp, where he befriended camper Byrne Rich who was 13 years old at the time, who was shy and withdrawn due to a hunting accident in which he mistakenly shot and killed his best friend. The two became almost inseparable. Rich invited Rodman to his rural Oklahoma home; at first, Rodman was not well-received by the Riches due to the fact he was 22 years old and black, but the Riches were so grateful to him for bringing their son out of his shell that they were able to set aside their prejudices. Although Rodman had severe family and personal issues himself, he "adopted" the Riches as his own in 1982 and went from the city life to "driving a tractor and messing with cows". Though Rodman credited the Riches as his "surrogate family" that helped him through college, as of 2013 he had stopped communicating with the Rich family after Byrne's mother allegedly referred to Rodman as a "nigger".
Rodman made himself eligible for the 1986 NBA draft. He was drafted by the Detroit Pistons as the third pick in the second round (27th overall), joining the rugged team of coach Chuck Daly that was called "Bad Boys" for their hard-nosed approach to basketball. The squad featured Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars at the guard positions, Adrian Dantley and Sidney Green at forward, and center Bill Laimbeer. Bench players who played more than 15 minutes per game were sixth man Vinnie Johnson and the backup forwards Rick Mahorn and John Salley. Rodman fit well into this ensemble, providing 6.5 points, 4.7 rebounds and some tough defense in 15.0 minutes of playing time per game. Winning 52 games, the Pistons comfortably entered the 1987 playoffs. They swept the Washington Bullets and soundly beat the Atlanta Hawks in five games but bowed out in seven matches against the archrival Boston Celtics in what was called one of the physically and mentally toughest series ever. Rodman feuded with Celtics guard Dennis Johnson and taunted Johnson in the closing seconds when he waved his right hand over his own head. As the Celtics closed out Game Seven, Johnson went back to Rodman in the last moments of the game and mimicked his taunting gesture. After the loss, Rodman made headlines by saying Celtics star Larry Bird was overrated because he was white. "Larry Bird is overrated in a lot of areas....Why does he get so much publicity? Because he's white. You never hear about a black player being the greatest". Although teammate Thomas supported him, he endured harsh criticism, but avoided being called a racist because, according to him, his own girlfriend Anicka "Annie" Bakes was white. In the following 1987–88 season, Rodman steadily improved his stats, averaging 11.6 points and 8.7 rebounds and starting in 32 of 82 regular season games. The Pistons fought their way into the 1988 NBA Finals, and took a 3–2 lead, but lost in seven games against the Los Angeles Lakers. In Game Six, the Pistons were down by one point with eight seconds to go; Dumars missed a shot, and Rodman just fell short of an offensive rebound and a putback that could have won the title. In Game Seven, L.A. led by 15 points in the fourth quarter, but Rodman's defense helped cut down the lead to six with 3:52 minutes to go and to two with one minute to go. But then, he fouled Magic Johnson, who hit a free throw, missed an ill-advised shot with 39 seconds to go, and the Pistons never recovered. In that year, he and his girlfriend Annie had a daughter they named Alexis. Rodman remained a bench player during the 1988–89 season, averaging 9.0 points and 9.4 rebounds in 27 minutes, yet providing such effective defense that he was voted into the All-Defensive Team, the first of eight times in his career. He also began seeing more playing time after Adrian Dantley was traded at midseason to Dallas for Mark Aguirre. In that season, the Pistons finally vanquished their playoffs bane by sweeping the Boston Celtics, then winning in six games versus the Chicago Bulls—including scoring champion Michael Jordan—and easily defeating the Lakers 4–0 in the 1989 NBA Finals. Rodman was hampered by back spasms but dominated the boards, grabbing 19 rebounds in Game 3 and providing tough interior defense.
In the 1989–90 season, Detroit lost perennial defensive forward Rick Mahorn, who was taken by the Minnesota Timberwolves in that year's expansion draft and ended up on the Philadelphia 76ers when the Pistons could not reacquire him. It was feared that the loss of Mahorn – average in talent, but high on hustle and widely considered a vital cog of the "Bad Boys" teams – would diminish the Pistons' spirit, but Rodman seamlessly took over his role. Averaging 8.8 points and 9.7 rebounds while starting in the last 43 regular-season games, he established himself as the best defensive player in the game, lauded by the NBA "for his defense and rebounding skills, which were unparalleled in the league". Rodman's feats drew him his first big individual accolade: the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. He also had a .595 field goal percentage, best in the league. In the 1990 playoffs, the Pistons beat the Bulls again, and in the 1990 NBA Finals, Detroit met the Portland Trail Blazers. Rodman suffered from an injured ankle and was often replaced by Mark Aguirre, but even without his defensive hustle, Detroit beat Portland in five games and claimed their second title. During the 1990–91 season, Rodman finally established himself as the starting small forward of the Pistons. He played such strong defense that the NBA said he "could shut down any opposing player, from point guard to center". After coming off the bench for most of his earlier years, he started in 77 of the 82 regular-season games, averaged 8.2 points and 12.5 rebounds, and won his second Defensive Player of the Year Award. In the 1991 playoffs, the Pistons were swept by the Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference Finals. The Bulls went on to win the championship. In the 1991–92 season, Rodman made a remarkable leap in his rebounding. He collected an astounding 18.7 per game, winning his first of seven consecutive rebounding crowns, along with scoring 9.8 points per game, and making his first All-NBA Team. His 1,530 season rebounds (the most since Wilt Chamberlain's 1,572 in the 1971–1972 season) have not since been surpassed. (Kevin Willis, who grabbed 1,258 boards that same season, came closest. Willis lamented that Rodman had an advantage in winning the rebounding title with his lack of offensive responsibilities.) In a March 1992 game, Rodman grabbed a career-high 34 rebounds. However, the aging Pistons were eliminated by the up-and-coming New York Knicks in the first round of the 1992 playoffs. Rodman experienced a tough loss when coach Chuck Daly, whom he had admired as a surrogate father, resigned in May; Rodman skipped the preseason camp and was fined $68,000. The following 1992–93 season was even more tumultuous. Rodman and Annie Bakes, the mother of his daughter Alexis, were divorcing after a short marriage, an experience which left him traumatized. The Pistons won only 40 games and missed the 1993 playoffs entirely. Four years later in his biography Bad As I Wanna Be, Rodman revealed just how far he had fallen. He had driven to The Palace of Auburn Hills in February 1993 late one night carrying a loaded rifle in his truck, debating whether or not he wanted to continue living. Eventually he fell asleep in the truck, where he was found by police who had been called to perform a welfare check on Rodman by a friend. It was in that moment that he had an epiphany: "I decided that instead [of killing myself] I was gonna kill the impostor that was leading Dennis Rodman to a place he didn't want to go ... So I just said, 'I'm going to live my life the way I want to live it and be happy doing it.' At that moment I tamed [sic] my whole life around. I killed the person I didn't want to be." The book was later adapted for a TV movie Bad As I Wanna Be: The Dennis Rodman Story. Although he had three years and $11.8 million remaining on his contract, Rodman demanded a trade. On October 1, 1993, the Pistons dealt him to the San Antonio Spurs.
In the 1993–94 season, Rodman joined a Spurs team that was built around perennial All-Star center David Robinson, with a supporting cast of forwards Dale Ellis, Willie Anderson and guard Vinny Del Negro. On the hardwood, Rodman now was played as a power forward and won his third straight rebounding title, averaging 17.3 boards per game, along with another All-Defensive Team call-up. Living up to his promise of killing the "shy imposter" and "being himself" instead, Rodman began to show first signs of unconventional behavior: before the first game, he shaved his hair and dyed it blonde, which was followed up by stints with red, purple, blue hair and a look inspired from the film Demolition Man. During the season, he headbutted Stacey King and John Stockton, refused to leave the hardwood once after being ejected, and had a highly publicized affair with Madonna. The only player to whom Rodman related was reserve center Jack Haley, who earned his trust by not being shocked after a visit to a gay bar. However, despite a 55-win season, Rodman and the Spurs did not survive the first round of the 1994 playoffs and bowed out against the Utah Jazz in four games.
