matt weighs in

The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame held it’s 2009 induction ceremony last Friday, September 14th, honoring Jerry Sloan, John Stockton, C. Vivian Stringer, David Robinson, and Michael Jordan as the 2009 class. Even without Jordan, the great former Chicago Bull, this is one heck of a class, with Robinson probably the headliner. But Jordan was there, and from what I can gather by reading different websites and analysis of the ceremony, he possibly was the only one who gave a speech, and most people were not happy with it. Others thought it was fine.

You probably won’t find many fans these days who wouldn’t call Jordan basketball’s Greatest Of All Time (G.O.A.T). You’ll get some old timers who will throw out Wilt or Russell, but those guys were giants playing in a game of many slow, white men. Looking back on it, they should have dominated, and they did. Their competition didn’t include, as Jordan’s did, so many players who could match up, either with size or quickness or both, and push them on the court. Jordan’s competition included: Magic Johnson, Larry Bird (yes, an athlete), Clyde “the Glide” Drexler, Dominque Wilkins, James Worthy, Joe Dumars, Reggie Miller, Dennis Johnson, Mitch Richmond, and near the end of his career, Kobe Bryant, Ray Allen, and Allen Iverson. These are all great players and competitors, who tried every time they played Jordan to slow him down, but failed.

The theme of Jordan’s Hall of Fame speech was competition, or rather, drawing your competitive fire from any source possible in order to achieve your goals. He told people to find things to continue adding “wood to that fire.”

The first thing people mention after calling Jordan the G.O.A.T is what a competitor he was, not only on the basketball court, but in his personal life. There are many stories, usually involving money and different games, where Jordan relentlessly pushes his opponent to keep playing until Jordan wins. He would practically force guys to stay up late into the night playing cards until he won most or all of his money back. He did the same thing on the golf course. Anything to keep him sharp and on top. And he didn’t know when to turn off his competitiveness, and probably doesn’t know even today.

In his speech, Jordan gave people a little more personal look into some of the moments in his basketball life that drove him to become great. These moments included talking about:
* Leroy Smith, whom he flew to the ceremony, the sophomore chosen over him for the varsity basketball team
* feeling slighted that Dean Smith didn’t include him on the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was a freshman at North Carolina
* the supposed “freeze-out” in the all-star game by the other Eastern Conference starters
* how Pat Riley and his teams always played him the hardest, and
* what might have driven him back to the game in 1994 after his retirement to play baseball (it involves comments made by Bryon Russell, the player for Utah who couldn’t defend Jordan on his final shot of the 1998 NBA Finals).

There are other very candid moments Jordan talks about that you can view in the link I included above. And I have to admit, I enjoyed his speech. I thought that it was refreshing that a player stepped outside the box on speeches and delivered something that really let us into his core as a player and let us see, from him, why he yearned to be the best and not only beat his opponents, but attempt to humiliate them. Most of these speeches follow the same bullet points – talk about the upbringing that grounded them, thank their families, their early coaches, their mom, the people and players that helped them achieve greatness as a professional, and then they’ll finish with some words of wisdom to tell the kids to follow their dreams.

Michael Jordan did all this in his own way, and it was at times funny, at times emotional, but it was all heartfelt. He had tears in his eyes as he stepped on stage, talked kindly about Scottie Pippin (briefly), his family, Phil Jackson, and yes, some of it was cold-blooded, just like he was as a player. He probably could have laid off Jerry Krause, the former Bulls’ General Manager, a little bit, but it would have been superficial of him to disregard their player-management feud in that setting and sugarcoat their relationship over the years. It probably would have been better to not mention Krause at all. If they ever do end their disagreement, it will be face-to-face, not from a stage.

I am really surprised that so many national sports writers reacted negatively to Jordan’s speech. In a nutshell, they wished it followed the clichéd H.O.F speech bullet points. They think that because he was such a competitive player and person for so long, that this stage was his time to be more humble, put all that drove him in his career behind him, and take more time to thank those who helped him achieve all that he did.

Isn’t this what he did? He did thank those people, but did so by telling us his personal stories about how they pushed him throughout his career to get better and play at a level higher than the rest. He had note cards, but appeared to say most of it off the cuff, which might be the reason some have called it rambling and unfocused. I like that he was just up there telling stories, naming names, telling me why he competed like he did, as hard as he did.

The only time he read directly from his notes, and looked the most uncomfortable, was at the end of his speech, when he talked about what the game of basketball has meant to him and how, hopefully, his career has given people the “optimism and desire” to achieve their own goals. Some people are calling Michael Jordan’s speech petty, but I thought he was genuine, his words refreshing, and he gave us a final glimpse at the competitive player he was and the man he is. It is hard to argue with the results.

******

To finish this, I have to say that Michael Jordan is my favorite player of all-time, just like many of you. I don’t recall having any other player’s poster up in my room (maybe one Larry Bird one, but it was probably soon covered up by a Jordan poster). One year, I even remember having all Jordan notebooks and folders to take to school for my work.

Here are my two favorite Jordan dunks of his career, one from college, an unexpected windmill on a breakaway, and the other in which he posterizes Patrick Ewing of the Knicks after making an unbelievable move on the baseline to shake two defenders:

(at North Carolina vs. Maryland)

(as a Bull vs. the Knicks. Skip to 1:20, if you prefer)