In response to Aamir’s regret over hearing Jordan’s HOF speech, I have to ask….
Did we really expect something different? This is who Jordan is, plain and simple. You take away the attitude, the sense of always being slighted, and you wouldn’t have what we got from him during his career. Instead of six titles, all the All Star games, scoring titles, etc, we’d have Clyde Drexler: a ring or two maybe, but no all-time domination. Or maybe Dominique Wilkins with a ring or two. With Jordan, the attitude really is the difference; contrary to what you might think, the physical difference between Jordan and his contemporaries was not that great. His Bulls team was an anomaly among champions; they had no All-Star players at either the point guard or center position, which almost never happens. They went into most playoff contests having a lesser player at two of five positions, sometimes three out of five (they sometimes were on equal footing at power forward). Man for man, their rosters would not stack up one through twelve against most of their adversaries. And yet they won six championships in eight years (and probably would have won eight out of eight if MJ hadn’t retired the first time).
Swap Jordan with Clyde Drexler; do you think they sweep the Pistons in the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals, or crush the Lakers in five for the title a week later? What about those wars with the Knicks? Does a Clyde Drexler-led team survive those? Or beat the Suns two out of three in Phoenix, or the Jazz two out of three in Utah? Does a Clyde Drexler led Bulls team pull out game seven against the Pacers, when they were running on fumes? And that’s not to hate on Clyde; Dominique probably doesn’t fare too well, either. Does anyone think that Hakeem would have any rings if the Rockets had to face the Bulls with Jordan those two years? And think back to the 1984 draft; there’s a reason Portland followed the conventional wisdom and picked Sam Bowie. Physically, they thought Jordan was the same guy as Clyde Drexler, who they picked a year earlier. Which he more or less was; the difference was the attitude. Clyde is a competitive, All-Star, Hall of Fame player; you put him with the right guys in the right circumstance and he gets a ring, like he did with Hakeem in 1995. That’s how it usually works.
Some guys get multiple All-Stars/Hall of Famers to run with and win multiple titles (Magic and Bird come to mind), but most don’t. Most Hall of Famers in a given era manage to hit the sweet spot (right teammates, right opponents, good luck with injuries) once or twice, and get a ring. Even during the Bill Russell era, Bob Pettit and Wilt Chamberlain managed to sneak in a title apiece. Magic and Bird combined for eight titles during the eighties, but Dr. J and Moses Malone still managed to get one in and Isaiah Thomas got two at the end of the run. But Jordan denied almost everyone of his era what they would have normally gotten during any other period. If the Jordan era was like any other, the Knicks or Suns would have probably have taken the Bulls down in 1993; Jordan’s team beat them both. The Pacers would have taken that game seven, or the Jazz would have won one of those two Finals showdowns; instead, Jordan beat them all. Jordan beat seven of his Dream Teammates in the playoffs; six of them never got a ring.
So what am I taking so long to say here? Jordan’s competitive fire was such that he took teams that didn’t measure up on paper one throught twelve with their opponents to six titles, and did so in such a fashion that his run at the top was exception to the rule in numerous ways. Along the way he denied damn near everyone who came up around the same time he did (half of the Dream Teamers got drafted between 1983 and 1985, and only Laettner was after 1987). The type of fire that you need to go there can often result in you not being the best person to be around. Self absorbed, egomanical, condescending, you name it. This is a guy who constantly belittled teammates in practice, and even punched one out (Steve Kerr), and who totally shattered whatever confidence Kwame Brown may have had when they played together. It’s no shock to me that he would unload on people like that unfiltered. That’s who he is.
But we’re as much to blame as he is. We ate that up the whole time he was playing. (OK I didn’t; I’m a Knicks fan so I was always hatin) We’re the ones who called David Robinson a punk because he wasn’t mean like MJ, who said that Barkley wasn’t serious enough and that Karl Malone was shook and that ‘Nique was to busy putting on a show. We applauded Mike for his ferociousness, and rewarded him fame and millions of dollars. His talent, while enormous, was far exceeded by his intensity. That’s not something you just flip a switch and turn off. Gracious? Reflective? Hell, no. We wouldn’t want that on the court from, so why do we expect to get it away from there?
