MJ showed us it ain’t always pretty.
Sitting on the floor, way too close to the TV, my eyes were fixated on what was happening in front of me.
Bucket-by-bucket, Michael Jordan was carving the L.A. Lakers up in the 1991 NBA Finals. It culminated in MJ’s completely unnecessary last-minute decision to turn a thundering dunk into a gorgeous left-handed, over-the-head lay-in off the glass. Marv Albert had a reaction just shy of ejaculation and the basketball-viewing world’s jaws collectively hit the floor. And with that, I was hooked.
Fast forward to five more championships, three more MVP’s, two comebacks, five more scoring titles and 18 years later. It’s Friday, September 11 and Jordan has been inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame.
Sitting on my couch, hunched forward watching him on YouTube, I watched as tears rolled down his cheeks while his greatest accomplishments played in front of him. He took the stage in Springfield, straddling a point of transition in his life. And then he spoke.
What he’s said, how he said it, has caught flak in the last few days.
Adrian Wojnarowski at Yahoo! has been at the forefront of the charge, tearing into Jordan after the speech for citing slights with past opponents, for being petty about his successes and an inability to let them go.
I’m left wondering though, was an
yone surprised by this?
Jordan got up on the stage and showed us who he is. He showed us what it took for him to get to that level that allowed him to succeed night after night, year after year.
In his speech, he often made reference to logs on the fire. These translated to MJ storing away all of the slights, doubts from his peers or the media and using them as motivation to prove his detractors wrong. Those slights ranged from the big—being cut from his varsity high school team in favor of Leroy Smith—to the small—being left off of a Sports Illustrated cover as a freshman while at UNC.
As Jordan’s success mounted in the NBA, the stories of his competitive nature become more and more common. Those stories of the logs on Jordan’s fire were also logs on the fire of his legend. The more competitive MJ revealed himself to be, the more he was lauded for it.
If for nothing else, Jordan is unique in professional sports for the amount of success he had in his career. Save for the years of his first retirement, he led the League in scoring from ’87-98. He went six-for-six in the NBA Finals. You could say that from 1987 onwards, Jordan was the top dog in the NBA. In his last three seasons with Chicago, the expectations were through the roof for him and the Bulls. With the pressure on him every single night for those three years, Jordan led those Bulls teams to win totals of 72, 69 and 62, respectively, all en route to NBA titles.
Jordan never tasted failure in Chicago. He never came up short, wasn’t humbled. While he was mediocre in Washington, those years have been washed away. They’re a blip on the radar that very few have paid attention to, especially in the weeks leading into Jordan’s induction into the Hall.
In his heyday, Jordan played on a stage that was unparalleled for any other NBA player. He had to be the best every night, had to win, had to bring home championships and MVP’s. Had to carry the load, had to carry the expectations of millions of fans, of David Stern, of NBC executives. Really, he was set up to fail. And with the weight of the world on his shoulders, he shook the pressure off like it John Starks on the baseline, spun back and dunked the expectations in everyone’s faces.
Along the wa
y, in a sense, a monster was created. It’s impossible to be that competitive your whole life and then turn it off when your playing days are done. The traits that put the world in Michael Jordan’s hands are the same ones that have been chastised in the days following his Springfield speech. Wojnarowski said in his piece that “Jordan didn’t hurt his image with the NBA community as much as he reminded them of it.”
If there’s anyone that should understand MJ at all, it’d be the NBA community. In the Jordan montage prior to his speech, Scottie Pippen showed that understanding and said a lot about his former teammate.
“Winning is hard to do,” he said. “And It’s a price that you pay for it and that’s how I saw Michael as a player: as someone that wanted to prove that he’s a winner every day.”
Jordan’s candor on Friday showed that he’s a winner and the cost that it came at. He’s not the guy that I’d want to have any kind of contest with (I picture him keeping a table full of people up, bleary-eyed at 5 in the morning until he won a round of poker) but even today, I’d put my money on him for a five-minute stretch through the final stages of a tight game in the NBA. Because nobody won like Michael Jordan.
LATEST NEWS & RUMORS
View all »
- 2012 NBA All-Star Reserves Announced
- 2012 McDonald’s All-American Rosters Announced
- John Salmons Debuts ‘Salmons and Brown’ at Fashion Week
- Ticket Prices Skyrocket as Linsanity Continues
- Big O: West, Chamberlain, Russell, Baylor Would Beat ’92 Dream Team
- Mo Williams Mad the Clippers Haven’t Given Him a Contract Extension
- Kobe Bryant: LeBron James Would Be the Ideal Teammate
- Video: Will Ferrell Does Player Intros for the Bulls and Hornets
- Kobe Bryant Expects Lakers Front-Office to ‘Tweak’ Team
- View All »
jordan went there and he was who he is supposed to be… not the average guy, not the kind of person who will say all the things ppl expect him to say
that was the gran finale of his career and he had all the rights to tell everyone how he was BUILT.
after everything he’s done, and it was a LOT, he always took a lot of hits, specially from those “media dudes”, poorly mediocre guys who can’t do anything good with their lifes but they get the chance to write/say stuff that a lot of ppl give credit for… thats the “year 2000 generation”, where journalist are celebrities…
Jordan fought a lot to be the best, and he is… the best athlete all time, on the best sport there is…
just congrats and thanks for all the momories… it was great to grow up watching you.
Yeah, he did. He showed us what a sore winner he is. When a player of Jordan’s stature calls out a guy like Bryon Russell, it’s like watching someone using hand grenades to kill a housefly. The Bulls won it all in ’98 & he’s still got beef over some stupid remark that Russell made about guarding him. So, what was dude supposed to say? “Hey, Mike. Since you’re the greatest of all time, I’m just gonna hang back and let you do your thing. I’d wish you luck in the series, but I don’t think you’ll need it.” Puh-leeze…
Comments