With the obsession over ESPN’s 10-part documentary series, “The Last Dance,” basketball fans young and old have had the pleasure of hearing new and amazing stories about Michael Jordan. One of those stories was told Wednesday during an interview on the Carmen and Jurko Show on ESPN Chicago. Their guest was Mike Barnett, the former hitting coach for the Birmingham Barons during Jordan’s brief stint playing double AA baseball.
Barnett told an instant classic story about The GOAT playing against a high school kid in a pick-up game.
The Barons had finished up an early morning game and were on the road home when they stopped to play a pick-up game at a local apartment complex. The Barons had a few former Division III All-American players on their roster, so it was young guys against old guys.
“We played them in a game up to 21. When we started there was nobody there. By the time we got done with that first pick-up game, there had to be 200 or 250 people around the basketball court…So we finish that game and we’re going to play one more game. Now it’s five-on-five. A couple of other people joined in and one of them was a kid that looked like, ya know, probably 18 years old, probably a high school senior going into his freshman year of college. And was 6′ 7″, I mean same height as Michael and everything like that…Ya know Michael is making him feel good. He’s playing him flat-footed and the kid scores a couple of baskets over him. And we’re coming down the floor and the kid goes, ‘Man you were my idle. You ain’t that good.'”
“Michael goes, ‘Excuse Me. You’re mine now.'”
“And from that point on the kid never got the ball off of his fingertips. It was hilarious.”
“So now we get down to game point and Tito [Terry Francona] comes over to set a pick and MJ goes, ‘Get outta here. Go stand over there.'”
“And he [Michael] was on the left-wing and he goes, ‘I’m gonna fake left, go right and jam on you. You ready?'”
“So MJ, fake left, crossover, and I mean it was the classic logo, ya know, you see of Michael and his real competitive nature came out. He jammed on the kid. The ball comes down hits the kid in the top of the head, and Michael goes, ‘That’ll teach you to talk trash to somebody you don’t know. I gotta go.'”
It’s that competitive nature that made MJ better than everyone else, and thanks to “The Last Dance,” we’re learning more and more each week about just how badly Jordan wanted to destroy his competition. Even if it was just a conceited 18-year-old kid.
