Michael’s playing time some thirty-one years earlier. Jordan knew
that many people thought that his getting cut in high school was a
myth. “Leroy Smith was a guy when I got cut he made the team—on
the varsity team—and he’s here tonight,” Michael explained. “He’s
still the same six-foot-seven guy—he’s not any bigger—probably his
game is about the same. But he started the whole process with me,
because when he made the team and I didn’t, I wanted to prove not
just to Leroy Smith, not just to myself, but to the coach that picked
Leroy over me, I wanted to make sure you understood—you made a
mistake, dude.”
It’s a remarkable window into Michael’s mind, for several
reasons. First off, it shows how he had twisted a predictable decision
into a major slight about his self-worth. Jordan hadn’t been cut from
any team. He and Leroy had both tried out for a single spot on the
varsity team. One had made it. That’s not getting “cut”—it’s expected
that an underclassman won’t make the senior class team! Nor had it
even been a referendum on his abilities. Leroy was six foot seven.
Michael was five foot eleven at the time. It’s also so childishly self-
absorbed. As if Leroy and his coach weren’t their own people, a
teammate he could have been happy for, a mentor he could have
learned from.
Yet for decades Jordan had chosen to be mad about it.
It’s almost palpable how uncomfortable the audience grew as the
complaints grew increasingly personal and petty. At one point,
Michael mentioned a remark that Jerry Krause made in 1997,
supposedly saying that “organizations win championships,” not just
individual players. Sneering at this minor—but true—observation of
the Bulls’ general manager, Michael explained that he had
specifically not invited Krause to the ceremony in retaliation. He
mentioned with pride the time he kicked Pat Riley, the coach of the
Lakers, the Knicks, and later the Heat, out of a hotel suite in Hawaii
because he wanted to stay in it.
Friends understood that Michael had intended for the speech to
be helpful. Instead of uttering a few platitudes, he wanted to show
just what it was that created a winning mentality. How tough it was.
What it took. He wanted to illustrate how productive anger could be
—how as a player each time he was slighted, each time he was
barry
(Barry)
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