Get that anger out of your brain and indulge in a pre-MLB Ichiro meeting Michael Jordan for the first time. Make sure to notice Ichiro’s tremendous “Tom & Jerry” sweatshirt, Jordan (of course) noticing Ichiro’s Carmine Jordan VIs and a good three minutes of the nicest Michael Jordan has ever been to someone he’s never met. All in all, a great watch.
(via SportsGrid)
You might have heard that Michael Jordan turned 50 over the weekend. Chances are pretty good that you did, considering that just about everyone over the age of 25 that’s semi-qualified to talk about basketball has turned the last week or so into an all-out blitz of Michael remembrance in honor of the milestone. Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report and Ball Don’t Lie all did separate countdowns of his Top 50 moments, ESPN the Magazine published the first truly interesting feature story on Jordan in lord knows how long, and just about everyone involved with All-Star Weekend had to offer up some sort of commentary on MJ’s greatness before they were allowed out of Houston. This makes sense, since when you’re the greatest person to ever do something, people will use just about any excuse to talk about how great you were. Turning 50 is about as good a reason as any.
The undercard of the MJ at 50 main event, however, has been another player from the 1984 draft class also hitting the half-century mark — Jordan’s good friend Charles Barkley, who turns the big 5-0 today. Despite playing for about as long as Jordan and enjoying a Hall of Fame career of his own, you won’t find too many countdowns of Sir Charles’ top 50 career moments, and if you did, they’d probably be filled with ambivalence-inspiring moments like his “I Am Not a Role Model” commercials and the time he threw a basketball at Shaq’s head. However, Barkley did get at least one tribute in honor of his 50th, the “Sir Charles at 50″ special that aired after All-Star Saturday on TNT, and again Monday night on NBA TV, just a couple hours after MJ’s own tribute, a “One on One With Ahmad Rashad” interview, aired on the same channel.
I watched both of these specials, and the contrast between the two was a stark one, both in how they treated the players’ respective careers, and in how they looked at their lives and legacies in the years since their retirements. By just about every conceivable estimation, Jordan had the better career of the two. He won more championships, scored more points, made more All-Star Games, sold more jerseys, influenced more facets of the game (and players who followed), and provided more unforgettable moments — enough so that making a Top 50 list of them doesn’t seem all that ridiculous, or even all that challenging. But a decade after both have retired, if you’re asking who seems happier, whose legacy feels more secure, who seems better-liked by fans and peers, whose life just seems … better, for lack of a better word, the answer is clearly Barkley.
As fun as it was to relive the great moments of MJ’s career in “One on One” — and most NBA fans, even those like myself who weren’t really around for them, can recite a timeline of them from memory, going from his game-winner in the NCAA Championship up to The Shot and the first and second Threepeats — it was, to quote Ferris Bueller, a lot like you were touring a museum, very cold and untouchable. No real insight was gleaned or emotional breakthroughs made, and Jordan seemed like Jordan always does: self-assured, but anxious and guarded, friendly, but not quite comfortable or trusting. He was not asked any particularly tough questions, and he did not give any particularly controversial answers.
In fact, the interview was a decidedly soft-pedaling one. Here’s a brief list of proper names not mentioned once over the course of the special: Jerry Krause, Bill Cartwright, Toni Kukoc, the Washington Wizards, Kwame Brown and Adam Morrison. MJ’s failure-marked Bobcats years are only alluded to in the context of whether or not he plans on attempting a third comeback as a player (he says he doesn’t), and his notorious, often borderline-sociopathic competitive streak is written off as MJ Being MJ, just another side effect of his drive to greatness (down to clips of Jordan’s infamously bitter Hall of Fame speech being treated as a lark, Michael “telling it like it is,” with a playful, Thomas Newman-like score being played underneath footage of him calling out his longtime rivals). It was a Greatest Hits package dressed up as an honest retrospective, and you get the feeling Jordan wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“Sir Charles at 50″ was not nearly so reverential. In fact, in the first five minutes of the special, Barkley gets called fat by someone from his hometown, his mom talks about spanking him, and Ernie Johnson asks him some tough questions about his dad being absent most of his youth. The overly familiar, borderline-mocking tone is present for much of the special, even in the celebrity tributes. While MJ’s special features the next generation of stars (CP3, KD, LeBron) paying tribute to his basketball greatness (though most hadn’t even been born yet when he was drafted in ’84), Barkley’s features his celebrity peers, as well as NBA players past and present, wishing him a happy birthday mostly by making jokes at his expense. Though less glowing, it feels much more honest.
Michael Jordan is known as one of the most competitive athletes ever, so on the occasion of his 50th birthday, we asked NBA All-Stars if there was anything in the world they thought they could beat the G.O.A.T. at.
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If you’ve got a spare $100,000 lying around and are reading this website, you are probably OK with spending all that money on something basketball-related, just so long as it’s awesome. And though, as a Bulls fan, I might be biased, I’m fairly certain that this fits the bill — it’s the structural blueprint for the United Center’s Michael Jordan statue that everyone takes a picture with whenever they go to a Bulls game. And it’s on eBay.
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- Item: Michael Jordan Statue Structural Blue Print Page
- Size: 24″ x 17 ” (the frame adds a 1.5 inches to each side)
- Description: The drawings are clear and readable, cheap frame, the blue print was poorly glue’d onto a piece of cardboard, can see the swirl of the glue through the paper, paper has yellowed except where the glue swirls are
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- Payment: Paypal
- Shipping and Handling
- Local pick up only but will help if you are making the shipping arrangement
OK, so there are some obvious flaws with this — you have to pick it up in Manteno, IL and there is no reason you would ever want to go there besides this, there are some glue swirls on the paper, the frame sucks — but it’s totally worth it to have the blueprints to a statue of Michael Jordan wearing a pair of shoes he never wore for a game. Buy a nicer frame, hang it above the mantle and you’re straight ballin’.
And though it totally makes sense that such a thing would exist, I’m a little surprised it does. I guess I always just figured that the plans behind Michael Jordan’s statue were just something along the lines of, “Build a statue of Michael Jordan dunking and make it look awesome.” The statue accomplishes that pretty easily, but it does make a lot of sense that there’d be more planning than just one guy telling another what he’d like to see. This is why I’m not an architect, sculptor or city planner.
So just pony up the $100,000 and get a super cool, one-of-a-kind piece of memorabilia. Literally no else will have this, so you’ll instantly have a leg up on all the other rich, eccentric Jordan fans out there. Just make sure you get a new frame because that one is bogus.
Couple more shots after the jump. Five Muggsys out of five, for all the Phenomenal Swag heads out there.
Jordan Brand is in the midst of XX8 Days of Flight — a campaign to get people hyped for the release of the 28th edition of the world’s most famous shoe that’s already featured some great writing and some wicked new colorways of every edition. Today is Day 12, so here are some things I remember about the Air Jordan XII.
The Flu Game is the signature game during the Jordan 12 era. It was awesome when I watched it at home as a kid and it remains awesome watching it today. 38 points in 44 minutes, 15 in the fourth, a tie-breaking three with 25 seconds left and one iconic photograph. It also inspired the greatest thing Josh Smith has ever said. “Can’t eat sushi in Utah, brother — landlocked” remains hilarious.
Sometime when you’re sick, throw it on. You’ll instantly feel motivated to do anything besides feel like the world’s biggest waste of organic material.
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Back when Eastbay catalogs were the jam, I used to spend literally an hour on the phone talking with my friend Marc Johnson about all the various sections. We would go through the thing page-by-page, discussing what shoes we liked, the random And1 shirts and all that nonsense. Our greatest disagreement regarding anything that ever appeared in the catalog was about the Jordan XII, which came in a colorway called “Obsidian-White.”
Nowadays, I think we can all agree that these are blue and white shoes. But back in the day, I was convinced they were black and white because obsidian is black. I looked it up in the giant dictionary we had in the closet and everything. The shoes are navy blue, no diggity doubt about it. But also, obsidian is definitely black. It says so on Wikipedia and everything. So even though I was wrong back then, I’m still kind of right.
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I 100 percent botched getting the Air Jordan XI when I was in 7th grade because I loved Grant Hill a little too much. The next year, however, was a different story. When the XII was released, I told my mom immediately that those were going to be my eighth grade basketball shoes. She got ‘em for me for Christmas, I played about 60 minutes of A-team basketball in them during the season, then I wore them with some Keith Van Horn-inspired tall socks to host our middle school’s talent contest as part of a classic odd couple bit with Tom Dean. It killed.
“He’s pretty good.” — Bismack Biyombo on Michael Jordan
Due to its extremely sensitive nature, I cannot reveal to you what is on my iPhone’s (4S, no big deal) lock screen. However, I can reveal to you what is on the background of LeBron James’ phone, which is theoretically a Samsung Galaxy Note II but in reality is probably an iPhone 5. I think this is a fair trade.
[LeBron James] revealed on Wednesday that the screensaver of his phone is a Photoshop image of himself handling the ball while guarded by Michael Jordan in his prime. “Jordan was my superhero growing up,” James said. “He was the guy I feel helped me get to where I am today. As a competitor, who would not want to go against the best? That’s like asking [Tom] Brady would he want to go against Montana in the fourth quarter.”
On one hand, this is pretty dorky. Mostly because it is something I feel like I would do, considering I once had a Photoshopped championship ring as my phone background. There’s just something inherently uncool about it to me, since I would do it.
But on the other hand, it’s kinda cute. Like, I bet LeBron James does wish he could have a showdown with Michael Jordan, just to prove that he can compete with the G.O.A.T. and also avenge that picture where Jordan looks zero percent impressed to be meeting smiley-faced, 18-year-old LeBron. It kind of reminds you that LeBron is still just a kid who looked up to Michael Jordan, only now he’s replaced him as the best player in the NBA.
In related news, sources say that the background for Chris Bosh’s phone is Chris Bosh making a Chris Bosh face because that’s what makes Chris Bosh laugh the most and Chris Bosh loves laughing.
