Bad mouthing Mormons, a pregnancy proposition from Madonna, and multiple fractures... in the worst place a guy can get 'em. Dennis Rodman is known world-wide for his off the court behavior just as much as his playing career, but there's still things about the polarizing figure you probably didn't know.
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00:00Bad-mouthing Mormons, a pregnancy proposition from Madonna, and multiple fractures.
00:05In the worst place a guy can get them.
00:07Dennis Rodman is known worldwide for his off-the-court behavior just as much as his playing career.
00:11But there are still things about the polarizing figure you probably didn't know.
00:16Like anyone coming into a newfound fortune, Dennis Rodman had to navigate his way through
00:19wealth after he was selected by the Detroit Pistons in the 1986 NBA draft.
00:24By the 1988-89 season, he was pulling in a salary of $550,000, roughly $1.5 million
00:30in 2024 dollars.
00:32That figure only went up as his playing career continued.
00:35With his newfound wealth, Rodman started opening his wallet to those less fortunate.
00:39But of course, he did it in his own unique way, by handing out cash to the unhoused people
00:44he would see on the street.
00:45His generosity was best exemplified by the kindness he showed a pregnant woman, who asked
00:49him for spare change for food as he was walking back from a restaurant.
00:52As he told The New York Times in 1990,
00:54"...I had $250 in my pocket and I gave it all to her.
00:57If I had $1,000, I would have given her that, too.
01:00There are a lot of people out there that are more worthy of this money.
01:03People without houses, people living on the street.
01:06I was lucky to come upon this, what I have now."
01:09Rodman showed the world he enjoyed dressing up like a woman when he arrived at a 1996
01:13event promoting his book Bad As I Wanna Be in a luxurious, French-made wedding dress.
01:18Saying he was bisexual and claiming he was marrying himself, he traveled to the promotional
01:22stop at a New York Barnes & Noble in a horse-drawn carriage.
01:25It wasn't the first or last time Rodman would publicly wear women's clothing.
01:28A year earlier, he donned a sparkly women's top to the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards.
01:34But Rodman's cross-dressing goes back even further than that — all the way back to
01:38his childhood.
01:39In his autobiography, the star divulged that it began by playing dress-up as a youth, and
01:43he connected that lineage to the flamboyant outfits he would curate throughout his public
01:46career.
01:47He wrote,
01:48When I was a kid, I would sometimes dress up as a girl.
01:50You play by dressing up and acting like a woman.
01:52I think a lot of kids have done that.
01:53When I cross-dress now, it's just another way I can show all the sides of Dennis Rodman."
01:58During the 1997 NBA Finals, when the Chicago Bulls faced the Utah Jazz, Rodman received
02:03the NBA's then-biggest-ever player penalty of $50,000 for twice disparaging Mormons in
02:08expletive-laden remarks.
02:10Utah has the highest Mormon population of any U.S. state, and Rodman evidently had qualms
02:14with how that was represented in the stands.
02:17Even though Rodman had already publicly apologized, the then-commissioner of the league, David
02:20Stern, came down hard on him with the monetary punishment.
02:24Of course, Rodman was no stranger to controversy.
02:26Earlier that same season, he'd been suspended for 11 games and fined $25,000 for kicking
02:31a courtside camera person.
02:32But his remarks directed toward Mormons got him in even bigger trouble.
02:36For his part, Rodman indeed seemed remorseful for the outbursts, but he also indicated that
02:40he didn't quite realize the remarks had spiritual weight, saying in his apology,
02:44If I knew it was a religious-type deal, I never would have said it."
02:48At the height of his fame in 1994, Rodman had a relationship with the pop superstar
02:52Madonna.
02:53It was one of the athlete's most highly-publicized flings, but they were together for only a
02:56few months.
02:57Still, Rodman dedicated an entire chapter in his 1996 memoir to their pairing, and he
03:02later revealed that she had made him an interesting proposition.
03:05She asked me if I got her pregnant, she paid me $20 million.
03:09Rodman went on to say that he was flown last-minute from Las Vegas to New York in an attempt to
03:13conceive with her.
03:14When asked by The Breakfast Club if the Madonna relationship made him more famous, he argued,
03:18It's the other way around.
03:19In 1993, I think her career was declining, and she said that the reason why she dated
03:23me was because I was a bad boy.
03:25But I was going up, and she was leveling off.
03:28Rodman reportedly first met Kim Jong-un, the leader of the totalitarian dictatorship in
03:32North Korea, in 2013, and he's since been on several more trips to North Korea.
03:38Rodman is something of an ambassador, it would seem, but the results of his many visits to
03:41the country still aren't entirely clear.
03:44According to State Department officials, Rodman's reported fifth trip to North Korea in 2017
03:48was purely a personal visit, and not in the name of statesmanship.
03:52We had so much fun, it was like you've been on the Jersey Shores, seriously, but in North
03:57Korea.
03:58But could Rodman's visits to North Korea have actually been done in cooperation with the
04:02CIA?
04:03Unfortunately, we'll never know for sure.
04:05Despite a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the nonprofit investigative journalism
04:09organization MuckRock, the U.S. federal government's Civilian Foreign Intelligence Service would,
04:14quote, neither confirm nor deny the existence of the requested documents.
04:17In June 2018, Rodman attended the widely reported North Korea-United States-Singapore summit
04:23between Kim Jong-un and then-U.S. President Donald Trump, seemingly using his friendship
04:27with Trump in an attempt to help smooth tensions between the two countries.
04:31Indeed, the former NBA star subsequently said that he thought an agreement between the U.S.
04:35and North Korea could actually come to fruition, telling Reuters,
04:38So, I think that people should not give up on the U.S. trying to engage with North Korea
04:41in a good, safe manner.
04:43I think Kim Jong-un wants peace.
04:45I know him very well.
04:46I think he wants peace."
04:48In 2019, Rodman was a contestant on Season 2 of The Celebrity Apprentice, and he was
04:52the fifth contestant fired out of 16 total players.
04:55Knowing that, it wasn't a stretch to guess that Rodman was already friendly with Donald
04:58Trump when he endorsed him for president in 2015.
05:02But the real shocker was that Rodman didn't endorse Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
05:06In a nearly unintelligible video message Rodman posted on Instagram that October, a
05:11former NBA player wore a Vote Kanye shirt and appeared to endorse Kanye West, the hip-hop
05:15star who had announced his bid as a third-party candidate.
05:18And in 2024, Rodman seemed to be keeping who he was voting for a secret.
05:23It's abundantly clear that Dennis Rodman has become more comfortable with himself after
05:27so many years in the spotlight, but he was never one to hide his emotions in the name
05:30of saving face in the first place.
05:33And that includes a 6-foot-7-inch sports star shedding a few tears when the time is right,
05:37even if everyone's watching.
05:38In 1990, when Rodman won the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year award, the basketball player
05:43got so overwhelmed that tears flowed down his face.
05:46But Rodman is individualistic to the core, and he has no qualms if people see him cry.
05:50As he told The New York Times just days after earning the award,
05:53"...I don't care what people think of me.
05:55It doesn't make you less of a man or more of a man because you cry.
05:58A man's going to cry if he does it in public or he's not in public.
06:01You feel emotion."
06:03Rodman completed his NBA career by playing 12 games for the Dallas Mavericks in 2000,
06:07before landing on a couple of American Basketball Association teams and subsequently moonlighting
06:12on squads in Mexico, Finland, and elsewhere.
06:14Even lesser known, however, is that when Rodman was with the Mavericks, he had lost his driver's
06:18license, so he lived in the guesthouse of famous businessman and former Mavs principal
06:22owner Mark Cuban.
06:23"...It was funny.
06:24I loved D-Rod, right?
06:25He would just, and he would come up to my house and he would just sit there watching cartoons
06:31all day."
06:33Impressively, Cuban even said that Rodman taught him something about marketing, explaining,
06:36"...I learned more from Dennis Rodman about PR and marketing than I learned in any MBA
06:41class or anything I've ever done.
06:43The man was a master of marketing.
06:44He'd be like, you just gotta keep refreshing and coming up with new stuff, and letting
06:48people know you're going to be there."
06:50Dennis Rodman isn't just a basketball star.
06:53He has also participated in the exaggerated world of professional wrestling.
06:56For World Championship Wrestling, he became a member of the NWO in 1997, but Rodman had
07:01first briefly reared his head in a triangle elimination match with Hulk Hogan at WCW's
07:05Uncensored event earlier that year.
07:08At 1998's Bash at the Beach, Utah Jazz power forward Karl Malone partnered with Diamond
07:12Dallas Page in a tag team match against Rodman and Hogan, truly merging the NBA and the WCW
07:18in a way never before done.
07:20The match came only weeks after Rodman and Malone had faced each other in the 1998 NBA
07:24Finals, when Rodman's Bulls defeated the Jazz for their sixth total NBA title.
07:29After his time in the NBA, Rodman continued to dabble in pro wrestling, appearing on Hulk
07:33Hogan's Celebrity Championship Wrestling in 2008.
07:36As recently as 2023, he showed up on a September episode of AEW Collision Show and their all-out
07:42pay-per-view alongside the wrestling stable The Acclaimed.
07:45In a 2016 installment of Ice TV's Party Legends, Rodman shockingly admitted that he had broken
07:51his penis three different times during sex over the years.
07:54The basketball star recalled the final instance as being officially diagnosed as a penile
07:58contusion, and also claimed that as many as eight different medical professionals in the
08:02emergency room had come over to look at it with bewildered curiosity.
08:05But Rodman also had to deal with some unnecessary medical extortion after the last emergency
08:09room trip.
08:10He said his girlfriend got a call from someone claiming to be with a group of medical personnel,
08:14saying that they would sell the photos taken of Rodman's contusion to a tabloid if he didn't
08:18pay up.
08:19Rodman said that his girlfriend told the attempted blackmailer to, quote,
08:21"...go ahead and do it," and then hung up the phone.
08:24But it's all water under the bridge now, and Rodman can seemingly still engage in sex.
08:28According to him,
08:29"...I'm good to go, man.
08:30It's all good.
08:31Take a pill.
08:32But that's three times I did that.
08:33Broke my d----."