Michael Jordan, famous for the meme that features him crying, was also a hell of a basketball player in the pre-Internet era. He starred in college at North Carolina, where he won a national title and went on to become one of the greatest baseball players in minor-league history to have once played in the NBA. (Oh yeah, he also won a few NBA titles.)
Roy Williams was an assistant at UNC in the 1980s and told a story on The Sidelines podcast (via Fox Sports) about how it was anything but a slam dunk (basketball term) that Jordan would come to Chapel Hill. Jordan grew up in the state but UNC was lukewarm on him. Said Williams:
“It was strange because we get a call from Mike Brown, who was the athletic director from the Hanover County schools, telling us that there was a player down there that he thought had a chance to be possibly something special,” Williams said. “Coach [Bill Guthridge] went down to watch him play a game his junior year and he played OK. But [Guthridge] came back and said ‘Yeah he’s athletic. But all he did was shoot a lot of long jump shots.’”
Assuming all those long jump shots were going in, that’s a weird negative assessment. “Yeah, he’s athletic, but all he does is run for long touchdowns.” Those still count, right? There were no three-pointers at this time, but still. Come on, coach Guthridge.
It wasn’t until Jordan showed up at North Carolina’s summer camp did Williams and the Tar Heels realize they had something special on their hands.
“Michael came, I remember camp started on Sunday, and I was running Carmichael Gym,” Williams said. “[It was] just free play. Kids could stay for 20 minutes and then they would rotate back to Granville Towers [dorms] and another group would come in.
“I was so impressed by Michael in the first 20 minutes that I said ‘why don’t you just stay and go back with the next group.’ And so he played another 20 minutes, and I was even more impressed with him. So he went back with that group and the counselor, and then 45 minutes he came back with another group. And it was almost a mile walk between Granville Towers and Carmichael so I said ‘why don’t you just stay here and I’ll give you a ride back to Granville.’ So he rode back to Granville with me in the car.”
Yada, yada, yada, turned out Jordan was a decent basketball player. If Jordan had gone to Duke, Indiana or another school, the only one that would have been crying was Williams, and that meme just isn’t as good.
