We all know Michael Jordan. He was arguably the most famous athlete of the 20th century. Michael Jordan was basketball’s most marketable star for about the last twenty five years. He’s as identifiable with the sport as probably any one singular person ever will be. Despite some current background noise, no one can honestly claim anyone today can measure up to what he left as his legacy. I would argue that no player ever could, or indeed ever will be able to do that. Like Muhammad Ali and Babe Ruth, Michael was an exception to which there was no equal.
“If I was to honestly meet Michael Jordan, and he wasn’t an ass, I’d actually be disappointed.”
That was something a friend of mine said to me the other day. I grew up with the “I wanna be like Mike” image that we all did, but something is different now. When I was growing up Michael Jordan was the guy who got cut from his high school varsity team, and then worked really hard to get on the team the next year. He was the nice guy who practiced harder than everyone else so that he could be the best. Somewhere when I got older that view changed. Maybe it was when I read the infamous book “The Jordan Rules” or when I found out he punched Steve Kerr(I seriously still can’t understand that).
I no longer view Michael Jordan as a nice guy, but I have more respect for him now than I ever did. Michael did work harder than everyone else, but that’s not it either. Michael Jordan is notorious for having been extremely hard on his teammates, but you always saw that he was never harder on anyone than himself. Michael Jordan achieved five MVP trophies, six championship rings, ten scoring titles and hosts of other awards and accolades in his basketball career, but you could always tell that he was never satisfied. Now, old and retired, he still seems restless for the game.
One of the biggest mistakes basketball fans make about Michael Jordan is expecting his replacement. We will not get another Michael Jordan. It will not happen. As much as we may want to paint Kobe Bryant or LeBron James with the Jordan brush, they will never be Michael. Kobe and LeBron will no doubt go on to do great things, but Michael Jordan is just that, Michael Jordan. Players will eventually come along that will break the records Michael set and do things that Michael didn’t, but to dwell on that as evidence of a new player’s supremacy is a fool’s game.
What fans miss about what still makes Michael Jordan the measurement by which all other players are gauged is that it’s not about numbers. Michael Jordan won six championship, and Bill Russell won eleven. Michael has five MVPs, and Kareem has six. People don’t refer to Michael as the greatest of all time because of accolades alone. All of the greats have amazing numbers they can throw at you. What made Michael Jordan the greatest was the fact that we’d never seen a player that was as larger than life than he was.
When Kobe Bryant went up against the Celtics in the NBA Finals this year, despite it being his fifth trip to that level of play, there was a question about him. Could he rise to this challenge? The general opinion of the basketball minds in the early years of Michael’s career was that if he could get the Bulls to the Finals, Michael would find a way to win. You never had to doubt Michael in the biggest games. Michael had the least amount of help of any of the major dynasties, but when it came time to bring his team home a trophy Michael never failed. That is his legacy and why he is the greatest of all time. Bill Walton may be crazy, but he does say some smart things occasionally. He once said that the truly great players, the few of them there are, when the biggest games came around, you knew they were going to be the best player. Does that honestly apply to anyone else in the history of basketball more than Michael Jordan?
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