When I was growing up, everyone wanted to be like Mike.
Now so does Geno Smith. The Jets second round pick has impressed early on in camp, and told the teams official website that, he wants to be like Michael Jordan when it comes to the effect he has on his team.
“It wasn’t even a football player man,” he told me on a “Jets Talk LIVE” installment that will air at 4:00 p.m. Wednesday on NYJets.com. “I was a big Michael Jordan fan, just from the things that I read and heard about him is he always held his teammates to the utmost accountability. That’s something I try and do. I try to hold myself to the highest standard possible.”
Smith of course lauded Jordan’s incredible competitiveness.
“Man, I try to have a perfect practice. I haven’t had one yet, but I try to go out there and I try to be perfect in practice,” he said. “That’s kind of what I’ve always done. I started doing that in high school and I just think that helped me develop into the player I was. I try to go out there and be perfect, and try to do everything the right way, the proper way so the coach doesn’t really have to coach me much.
“But I’m still in the learning phase, making mistakes every day and you get into the film room and you go watch it. But the benchmark so far is to try and be mistake-free and (I’m) just learning as much as I can.”
If Smith wants to truly be like Jordan, he needs to work on his conditioning first.