Competitive drive makes entering Hall ‘no fun’ for Jordan
John Stockton couldn’t stop smiling. C. Vivian Stringer’s voice cracked with emotion. David Robinson spoke with the excitement of a teenager presented his first car.
And the greatest basketball player in history didn’t want to be there.
He couldn’t avoid it. Not even the mysterious, sanctimonious, often narrow-minded members of basketball’s Hall of Fame screening and honors committees are stupid enough not to nominate and elect Michael Jordan the instant he became eligible.
But at a news conference at the Final Four in Detroit on Monday, the essence of what made Jordan iconic couldn’t have been clearer. What set him apart from anyone ever to hoist a shot is what irritated him when standing alongside other members of the 2009 class and later speaking about the moment.
Competitiveness didn’t just define him. It ran through his blood. Others have owned the trait at towering levels. Jordan was possessed by it.
"This is no fun for me," he said. "I don’t like being up here. It means my basketball career is completely over. I had hoped this day would come in 20 more years or when I was dead and gone. This is a love-hate moment for me. I want you to always think I can go put the shorts on and play. But the Hall of Fame … what else is there to do?
"I’m 45 and still think I could play. You guys don’t know if I could or not, but at least I’d have you thinking that way. But the Hall of Fame … it’s over. Done with. Can never put the uniform on again."
A close friend always has debated with me his claim that Oscar Robertson was better than Jordan. I like to remind him basketball really has existed beyond the 1960s and early ’70s. He reminds me Robertson is the only player in history to average a triple-double over the course of a season. I remind him Jordan won five more championships, four more Most Valuable Player awards, had nine more all-defensive team selections, 10 more scoring titles, 2,400 more steals …
It’s one of those subjective, fun arguments that I win and allow him to think he does.
Longevity matters when listing all-time greats. So do statistics and number of titles. But so do things many find indefinable. Things such as the insatiable hunger to dominate.
They didn’t say Jordan was always the first to arrive at practice and last to leave because it made for good copy. He didn’t lose to a teammate at pool one night, immediately purchase a table and practice until he could thoroughly whip his friend because he had a lot of spare time.
He was like Babe Ruth then and Tiger Woods now — where one athlete stands above his sport — because he played cards and ping-pong as if it was the seventh game of the NBA Finals. Lots of guys claim they own such a competitive streak. So few have.
It’s the thing I miss most about watching Jordan.
He retired for the final time in 2003 and says he can just now sit and watch a game without being overcome with anxiety to play or the need to criticize. Thank goodness for golf.
"Golf is my escape," he said. "One day you can shoot even par and the next 102. You can never dominate for long or feel you have everything working. I am a compulsive, competitive guy. So I go golf to deal with that."
Yes, the Hall of Fame couldn’t have messed this one up. In fact, the entire class (Utah coach Jerry Sloan also was elected) is deserving. But the injustice that is Jerry Tarkanian’s exclusion continues, meaning the reasons for keeping the former UNLV coach out remain as ignorant as they are arrogant.
Get this: One of the finalists for this year’s class was Vladimir Kondrashin, the former Soviet Union national team coach involved in one of the most controversial finishes in international sport when his team defeated the United States at the 1972 Olympics.
You are telling me Mr. "I swear I pushed the timeout button" (wink, wink) is a finalist and Tarkanian continues to get the shaft? Absurd.
Amazingly, though, the flawed process got it right with Jordan, who once said this:
"I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life.
"And that is why I succeed."
We received another glimpse of that unparalleled competitive drive Monday, when on a morning his career was celebrated with basketball’s highest individual honor, Michael Jordan still wasn’t ready to put the shorts away.
It’s the trait we should all miss.
It made him the best ever to play.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at 383-4618 or egraney@reviewjournal.com.
