Jeff Eisenberg over at The Dagger shared a rare video today, and it’s helping me keep things in perspective.
Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player ever. I’m not taking a brave stance by saying that. He helped the Looney Tunes win a game against space monsters, is a 6-time champion with 6 NBA Finals MVP awards, once had a gross barbecue cheeseburger named after him and, earlier this week, was dunking on kids at age 50. I’ve seen the guy do everything.
What I hadn’t seen before are his first-ever points as a college player, which are, for all intents and purposes, the first points of his career. Mike Jordan (Mike!) had his first game at UNC in 1981. They beat Kansas 74-67. Here’s the beginning of that, and the beginning of everything.
“Jordan’s first shot … is no good.”
That’s my favorite part of the clip. The greatest basketball player of all time bricked his first shot. It looked like a shot I might take at the gym. A little later he takes another shot at it, sinks a baseline jumper, and we’re off.
There’s an easy lesson here about how if you miss the first shot, you just come back and take another one. And yeah, we aren’t all born with the ability to make a billion other shots and emasculate a decade’s-worth of NBA legends or whatever, but the lesson stands.
Secondary lesson: If you’re named Michael, don’t let anybody call you Mike.
