Gretzky couldn’t help but call MJ out during a private gambling session.

Putting Michael Jordan in his place takes a lot of courage, as the Chicago Bulls icon is highly revered in sports circles. But if you’re the greatest ever in your respective sport, you’d have no problem correcting a fellow GOAT. That’s what happened in Las Vegas when Jordan and hockey legend Wayne Gretzky were in a casino together.

Rich Strafella, the former vice president of operations of Hard Rock Hotel, spilled the beans in an interview with UrbanDaddy in 2010. Clearly, he had no issues not following the unwritten rule, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

“I remember a night when Wayne Gretzky insulted Michael Jordan at the table,” Strafella said. “It was a private salon game. Michael had ordered a drink from the cocktail waitress, and he gave her a five-dollar chip. Wayne took it off the cocktail waitress’s tray, gave it back to Michael, grabbed a hundred-dollar chip from Michael’s stack, and put it on the cocktail waitress’s tray. Then he said, ‘That’s how we tip in Las Vegas, Michael.'”

A cheapskate billionaire?

It’s unclear why Jordan gave a $5 tip when it was a mere drop in his ocean of fortune. Was he just being cheap, or did he not know how things were done in Vegas? The latter is unlikely, as the five-time NBA MVP has been a fixture in the Gambling Capital of the World for a long while. He even once had the intrepidity to drag Dennis Rodman out of a Las Vegas hotel room during the 1997-98 season.

Interestingly, stories of MJ being a cheapskate have spread over the years. For instance, Charles Barkley once shared an anecdote about Jordan stopping him from giving alms to a homeless man.

However, it’s not that Jordan was just being stingy. He valued hard work so highly that he believed if the vagrant could say, “Do you have any spare change?” he could also be able to say, “Welcome to McDonald’s. How can I help you?”

Then again, this is the same person who once wanted to flip a coin for $100,000 with a random stranger.

“We were all hanging out afterwards when one street dude came up there with a bag of $100,000. ‘MJ, let’s gamble.’ MJ looked at him, ‘I ain’t got a lot of time. Flip a coin for it, heads or tails?'” Jamal Crawford recalled.

“The dude looked at that money like you could tell he had all the hood’s money. He was like, ‘Man, I can’t do this. I have no flip.’ He looked, ‘I’m good,’ and left,” he added.

Working hard to build his empire

Maybe MJ just wanted to teach the waitress in Vegas a brutal financial lesson, but fortunately, Gretzky was there to save the day. It’s tough to argue against Mike’s philosophy, though, considering how successful he has become in life.

Interestingly, he earned less than $94 million in NBA salary through 16 seasons in the league. Still, he managed to become the first billionaire athlete, breaching the mark in 2014. Jordan is now worth $3.5 billion, per Forbes.

Evidently, he didn’t amass his fortune through handouts. The six-time NBA champion used his business acumen to turn his investment in the Jordan Brand and the Charlotte Bobcats/Hornets into billions. In addition, he learned to leverage his popularity to score dozens of endorsement deals.

So, Jordan has earned the right to do whatever he wants with his money.