Michael Jordan

Although he was already an outstanding athlete, in Grade 10 Michael

Jordan was told he wouldn’t be picked for the varsity basketball team

- and would never make it as a college or professional player -

because he was too short.

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It now seems incredible that anyone ever told the boy who would become the greatest
basketball player in history that he was never going to make it as a professional, but that
is exactly what happened to the legendary Michael Jordan.
Today, Jordan is described by most experts as the best player to ever pick up a basketball.
His list of awards, records, scoring titles, most-valuable-player trophies, Olympic gold
medals, NBA championships, and other honors goes on for several pages. When the TV
sports channel ESPN conducted a poll of sports journalists, they voted Michael Jordan
the number one athlete in any sport of the past one hundred years!
Yet in high school, Jordan couldn’t even make the varsity basketball team. He was
already an outstanding athlete in basketball, football, and baseball, but when he tried out
for the senior basketball team in Grade 10, the coaches told him he was simply too short.
He was told that, at 5’ 11” (183 cm), he was never going to make it as a college or
professional player.
Some people might have taken that judgment to heart and lost their self-confidence, but
Michael Jordan took it as a challenge, and decided he would prove the coaches wrong.
He took his dedication to the sport to the next level, practicing and working out in every
spare moment. In Grade 11, Michael was on the basketball team. In Grade 12, he was