Rodman fearful NBA return will be blocked
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-02-17 08:52

"We don't get on," he added. "The reason I haven't been back in the last two years is because of him and the fact that he's blocked my comeback so many times.

"I was supposed to go to the New York Knicks camp last summer but he blocked it. I was supposed to go to Denver after that but he blocked it.

"For some reason he doesn't want me back in the NBA and maybe he feels it will be all 'Dennis, Dennis, Dennis'. Well, wasn't it all Michael (Jordan), Michael, Michael in the past?"

Rodman emphasized the fact that he has the best winning percentage of any NBA player and insisted age was no barrier to improving that record.

"I've got five NBA rings and a couple of ABA rings but I also have the highest winning percentage of any player in the league's history," he added. "Not a lot of people know that.

"Michael Jordan doesn't have that record, Larry Bird doesn't have that record and Bill Russell doesn't have that record. But I do. I have that."

Rodman, speaking in an interview Thursday with Sky Sports, also entered the debate currently raging in the NBA as to whether LA Lakers star Kobe Bryant is on a par with the legendary Jordan.

Rodman, who won three of his five NBA championships as a team mate of Jordan at the Chicago Bulls, had no doubt who was the better player.

"I call him 'God,'" said Rodman of Jordan. "As for his ability to do what he's done. People compare Kobe to Michael. There is no comparison. His beauty, if you just watch his body, his beauty of the game of basketball, he simplifies like I said (Mikhail) Baryshnikov, as a dancer, as an athlete, a high-flyer.

"Just that sex appeal he had on the floor, to be this athlete that no player should be in the history of the game and it was just amazing to watch and being his team mate it was like I'd been there all my life to see this and, like I said, it was incredible.

"With Chicago, it was the most unusual adventure I've ever had as an athlete, where we didn't really talk to each other but we knew how we felt about each other, we knew what each other was going to do each given day. It was we just knew we had the connection."