Alright, sure. So Elias Pettersson and JT Miller don’t seem to like one another very much, at least on a personal level.
It’s all anyone wants to talk about right now, so let’s talk about it. After Elliotte Friedman brought the discussion back to the forefront this past week, ex-head coach Bruce Boudreau stepped in to seemingly confirm the feud, telling TSN that “I knew they had a little bit of a problem between them before I got there. But I thought that was all straightened out and everything.”
How much of a ‘problem’ exists, and whether it has truly extended into the modern day – and especially whether it has anything to do with the Canucks various on-ice woes this season – cannot be determined through Boudreau’s words, nor anyone else’s at this point in time. But there’s enough smoke there to probably say with at least some confidence that there must be some genuine enmity between Vancouver’s two top centres.
For now, we can leave it at that, and move on to the more important topic of whether such dressing room rifts are insurmountable obstacles when it comes to winning sports games and sports championships.
The answer would appear to be ‘no.’ Credit to the folks over at Ranker for being the main source of our non-hockey content.
The gold standard for teammates not liking one another, but succeeding anyway, is probably that of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal.
Now, this isn’t a basketball blog, but we imagine you’re all at least vaguely familiar with these two. Even non-hoopers have probably heard of their rivalry. O’Neal and Bryant played for the LA Lakers for eight seasons together, and won three consecutive championships in the years 2000, 2001, and 2002.
But that doesn’t mean they got along.
Things got downright petty between Bryant and O’Neal, even amidst their championship run. Both publicly called the other “selfish” in the early 2000s, and took so many cheapshots at one another through the media that coach Phil Jackson said they were both “juvenile.”
Eventually, the relationship fell apart further, and O’Neal wound up demanding a trade in 2004. Further sniping ensued, including a rap diss track delivered by O’Neal about Bryant’s supposed inability to win without him. But even that can’t take away from the glory the duo achieved for the Lakers on the court.
Fortunately, the two were able to reconcile in retirement before Bryant’s untimely demise in 2020.
A lesser-known – at least at the time – basketball teammate feud was one between Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. This one is sort of the opposite of the Bryant/O’Neal spat, in that it only really hit the public consciousness after the fact, and that it only seems to be getting worse in the present day.
Jordan and Pippen won six championships for the Chicago Bulls in ten seasons together as teammates. That’s about as dominant a run as two teammates have had in any team sport. Whatever was going on between them, they kept it behind closed doors, always speaking highly about each other as people and colleagues.
Then The Last Dance aired, and people learned just how many things Jordan used to take personally. This brought up some old wounds, and Pippen began to take several shots at Jordan through the media. Just last year, Pippen told a podcast that “He was horrible to play with; it was all 1-on-1, shooting bad shots,” and that there was no repairing the relationship because “Their egos are huge. I don’t bow down to people like that.”
Jordan, for his part, has kept uncharacteristically quiet about the dispute. How much of this is leftover bitterness from the ‘90s, and how much is retroactive anger on Pippen’s behalf, is hard to surmise. But there’s enough here to suggest they didn’t exactly get along back in the day…and they still won six championships anyway.
We turn from basketball to baseball for a few more intriguing examples of this phenomenon.
Barry Bonds is a household name, even outside of baseball fandom. Jeff Kent isn’t, but the two had a great run of success for the San Francisco Giants in the early 2000s, including three consecutive National League MVP awards – Kent first in 2000, then Bonds in 2001 and 2002. They also couldn’t keep their hands off of one another.
Bonds and Kent had a very public and very intense fight in the dugout in 2002. Both claimed it was no big deal, despite needing to be broken up by a manager, with Kent stating they could “Add this to the half-dozen times we’ve done it before.”
Kent’s words after the fact might have some important relevance to Canucks fans. He reflected, post-retirement, that “We weren’t friends off the field. I’ve never really spent any effort trying to evaluate our relationship or care about it…Why do we have to be friends? Why is that such a big deal? We played well. We relied on each other on the field to win. That’s all that matters: win.”
It must be noted that Bonds and Kent did not win a World Series together, though they did lose in the finals in 2002.
One more baseball tale worth telling is that of the feud between Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. The two started out as legitimate rivals on separate teams, but maintained a close friendship until A-Rod took some real shots at Jeter in the media, including saying “You never say, ‘Don’t let Derek beat you,’ he’s never your concern.”
Then, in 2004, Rodriguez joined the Yankees, and the two became teammates. He later copped to the awkwardness, telling a docuseries crew that “The first month, I didn’t feel comfortable with me being there. I didn’t feel like he [Jeter] felt comfortable either. I think early on [in their relationship] I was in that circle of trust. I think that changed when I said some things he didn’t like and that for him, broke the trust, and I think from that moment on it was never quite the same ever again.”
But A-Rod and Jeter managed to bury their differences enough to win the World Series in 2009. And they continue to work together to this day on Fox Sports. Whatever there once was between them, they handled it, got the job done, and continue to be able to maintain an at least professional relationship.
There are more examples to be found, both in sports and outside of them. Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels, the actors inside R2-D2 and C-3PO, reportedly couldn’t stand one another, and they still saved a galaxy far, far away. Kim Cattral and Sarah Jessica Parker supposedly didn’t speak to one another on the set of Sex and the City. Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey came to hate one another on the set of Dirty Dancing.
So, whatever the truth of the matter is, maybe it’s not time to put Pettersson and Miller in a corner yet.
We don’t really know how real and immediate this quarrel is. But we do know that, even if there’s some genuine bad blood, that’s not exactly mutually exclusive to their finding success on the ice.
And that’s what really matters in the grand scheme of sports teams.
