NBA Archives Debunked: The Jordan Saga

Chapter 4 Breaking the Cocoon (1)

In the summer of 1980, 17-year-old Michael Jordan got the chance to participate in the Dean Smith basketball training camp.In North Carolina, this was a big deal because Dean Smith was a nationally known top basketball coach, and it was believed that only the best high school athletes would receive an invitation from Dean Smith.

Leroy Smith went with Jordan, and they shared a room with two white men.Those two white guys, one named Buzz Peterson and the other named Randy Shepherd.

Buzz Peterson was already a well-known athlete and even a candidate for Mr. North Carolina Basketball. Mr. North Carolina Basketball, an award given to the most outstanding high school player of the year, made Peterson one of the most talked about players at that Dean Smith basketball camp.

Another favorite is Lynwood Robinson, the point guard on his high school state championship team and considered the next Phil Ford.Phil Ford was a star point guard from North Carolina who also played well in the NBA after college, only to have his career ruined by injuries.

As for Jordan, not many people seem to know him.

The North Carolina coaching staff first heard about Michael Jordan's existence earlier that year, when Jordan was just in his third year of high school and had just grown a lot.A middle school athletic director named Michael Brown called North Carolina's Roy Williams and told him: I've got a player on my side that I've probably seen in my life The most outstanding basketball seedling.

The name Roy Williams is now a household name.He is the current head coach of the North Carolina men's basketball team.After Dean Smith, Roy Williams has also become a famous college basketball coach. He led North Carolina to win the NCAA National Championship twice in 2005 and 2009.Of course, as early as 1980, Roy Williams was just Dean Smith's apprentice and assistant.

Originally, Dean Smith was going to send Roy Williams to scout Jordan, but at the last minute, the task fell to chief assistant Bill Guthridge (Bill Guthridge).Michael Brown's phone call had already made Roy Williams very interested in Jordan, so as soon as Gusrich came back from the inspection, Roy Williams asked him: How is the kid Jordan?Guthrich replied: It's hard to say, because the night he went to scout, Jordan was shooting jumpers, jumpers, jumpers, and pretty much nothing else.However, Gusrich added: "But he did have an extra gear." What that means is that Jordan was at least athletic, running faster and jumping higher than most kids.The result reported by Gusrich to Dean Smith is: Jordan is good enough to gain a foothold in the ACC (the league to which North Carolina belongs), has good athletic talent, but his skills need to be developed.In Jordan's senior year of high school, this was the only time North Carolina sent someone to inspect him.

Part of Roy Williams' job in North Carolina is to make sure that the best high school players in the entire state of North Carolina will come to Dean Smith's basketball camp, and no big fish will slip through the net.So, after inviting Buzz Peterson and Lynwood Robinson, Roy Williams also called Jordan's high school coach, Pop Herring, and arranged for Jordan and Leroy Smith to come with him.

That week, about four hundred high school kids showed up at the camp, of all ages, heights, and levels.Some of them are players that North Carolina is really interested in, but most of them have limited talents. They just want to take the opportunity to participate in the training camp to improve themselves and go back to attack the school team.

The first day was very lively.Roy Williams is in charge of all the kids, and he makes sure that each one of them gets to play ball for a while at Carmichael Stadium in North Carolina, so the kids can go back and brag to their friends: "Yeah, I Played in such a legendary gymnasium!" Due to the large number of people and the need to take care of everyone, the children had to be allowed in and out quickly, and they couldn't stay inside for too long.Roy Williams arranged it as best he could, with older kids playing older kids and younger kids playing younger kids, all divided into groups of thirty so that the games could be played on three courts at once.

Roy Williams paid special attention to Jordan from Wilmington—then used to call him Mike Jordan—and he found that the kid was really thin.After Jordan's set was over, Roy Williams took him aside and asked him to stay for another round.After the second round, Jordan left the arena with the other kids, but soon after, he managed to sneak back and played the third round.This impressed Roy Williams.Coaches always like to see signs like this, it shows that he is a player who is willing to work hard on the court.However, what makes Roy Williams unforgettable is Jordan's amazing talent.His natural athletic ability, more than any other kid, is exactly what coaches dream of.

After practice that day, Roy Williams excitedly went to the office to find his good friend and another Dean Smith assistant, Eddie Fogler.

"I think, I just saw the best 6-foot-4 high school player I've ever seen," Roy Williams said.

"Who is it?" Fogler asked.

"Mike Jordan, a kid from Wilmington."

Jordan and Leroy Smith, Buzz Peterson and Randy Shepard, the four people who lived in the same apartment, got to know each other very quickly because of basketball.

In training camp, Jordan and Shepard were in one group, and Peterson and Smith were in the other.After returning from practice every day, Shepard reported what happened to Peterson. The topic of the report every day was Jordan, and the content of the report was upgraded every day.

On the first day, Shepard said to Peterson, "Hey, the guy next door, Mike, he's such a good athlete, he can really jump."

The next day, what Shepard called a "good athlete" became a "terrific athlete."

Here's what Sheppard said on the third day: "Buzz, you can't believe what it's like to play with him—you just throw him the alley-oop and that's it. Inside, he's a killer because he's so fast, he's so jumpy."

By the fourth day, Sheppard told Peterson: "Buzz, you and I have never seen him like this. I think this guy can play in the NBA!"

In Shepard's view, Jordan is thin, but he can really drive to the basket with the ball, and then turn around and score.Not many high school players can do that.

The four North Carolina kids lived together for a long time and got along well, coming in and out together.However, Shepard was keenly aware that there was a little gap between him and Peterson, and between Jordan and Smith.This gap is caused by basketball.Roy Williams and other North Carolina coaches never took their eyes off Jordan and Peterson.Nobody picked it out, but it was clear that Shepard and Smith were not up to the level of their best friends and would end up in small schools, while Peterson and Jordan were destined for elite schools—North Carolina, Duke, or Kentucky—and so were they. Become a star, and maybe even become a professional player.

Slowly, a tacit consensus was reached among the four, and the friendship between Jordan and Peterson began to deepen.Years later, Sheppard recalled: "Leroy and I lost a point or two, but we understood that. Michael and Buzz were starting to emerge, and the future was clearly theirs. They saw that their destinies were very similar, and it brought them closer. the distance between them."

Jordan's unrestrained enthusiasm deeply infected Peterson.In those days, Jordan looked extremely happy, and an unprecedented self-confidence emerged spontaneously. He began to imagine major games, and began to look forward to a glorious future. That kind of recognition of himself was more naive than arrogant.Years later, as Peterson matured and became a college coach himself, he could better understand the process Jordan went through.At that stage, what Jordan loved and cared most about was basketball. For many years, he had been troubled by his height, but now, he suddenly grew to 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 meters), and suddenly realized how good he was. Suddenly he was favored by authority figures, his self-confidence swelled and exploded along with his talent, and his youthful pride suddenly increased."He knew he was going to get better, and for the first time in his life, he had a sense of what the future might hold for him, and he reveled in it," Peterson said.

Dean Smith is an expensive master of the generation. His basketball training camp belongs to a decent family, emphasizing laying a good foundation, and does not encourage fancy performances such as dunks. Therefore, Jordan actually does not have so many opportunities to show his athletic ability. Alley-oop is the limit.

After four days, Peterson hadn't seen Jordan play because the two were not in the same group.But one day, when Peterson came back from training, he saw Jordan playing with Mike O'Koren, Al Wood and other current North Carolina players on the outdoor basketball court. Smith was among them.The game was fierce. Once O'Koren dribbled the ball for a layup and gave Smith a slap in the chest. Smith couldn't stand it, but Jordan enjoyed this confrontation.Peterson watched for a while and concluded that everything Shepard had told him was true, and much more than that.In this kind of collegiate level game, Jordan can not only complete advanced movements, but also do them with ease and without breaking a sweat.Watching Jordan, Peterson not only saw his excellence, but also realized his own shortcomings for the first time—some things, he would never be able to do, no matter how hard he tried, he still couldn't do it.

Promising good seedlings will start to receive recruitment letters from some college coaches in their senior year of high school, and at the same time, they will also receive invitations to some high school star basketball training camps. In those star training camps, the best high school players can attract the most The eye of a good college coach.Jordan had only been on the varsity team for a year, was not well known, hadn't been invited to any star camps, and Buzz Peterson had already received invitations to b/c all-star basketball camps - to get this one To qualify for the competition, there must be recruiting letters from three college coaches as a stepping stone, and Jordan did not.So, Jordan asked Peterson very carefully: How did you get it?
Recalling these later, Peterson believes that this is due to Jordan's competitiveness.Jordan's subtext at the time was: Why do you have it and I don't?You are no better than me!
A few years later, when Jordan was about to sign a sneaker endorsement contract with Nike, he met Nike's chief ball explorer Sonny Vaccaro for the first time. The first thing Jordan did was to make fun of him—Vaccaro Jordan didn't forget that he wasn't invited to the high school star training camp he organized.

People outside don't know about Jordan, and Dean Smith and the coaches of North Carolina deliberately concealed their first impression of Jordan from the outside world.Many people think that when North Carolina later recruited Jordan, it was not until the late Dean Smith basketball training camp that the coaching staff discovered Jordan's talent by accident.Not at all. In the midsummer of 1980, on the first day Jordan appeared in North Carolina, Roy Williams conveyed his joy at seeing Jordan to the rest of the coaching staff, and then other coaches paid more attention, and they all watched To what Roy Williams saw.Soon, within the North Carolina coaching staff, the situation became clear: North Carolina wanted only three people in this training camp—Buzz Peterson, Linwood Robinson, and Michael Jordan—and Jordan was their best. wanted one. "At the end of that week, we had decided that if we could only hire one person in the whole of America, it would be Michael Jordan," Roy Williams said. We want to keep it that way. But he's the best player out there, that's obvious. We know he's going to grow and get better. How good, of course, we don't know."

You can't hide it.Various rumors about Jordan have begun to spread. Not only in the college basketball circle, but even people in the professional basketball circle have begun to learn about Jordan through North Carolina channels.Doug Moe, the assistant coach of the NBA's Denver Nuggets at the time, was a graduate of North Carolina.That summer, he went back to school to visit and study, and saw the young Jordan.One day he called Donnie Walsh.Like him, Walsh also came from North Carolina. He was the Nuggets coach at the time and was Doug Mo's boss.

As soon as the phone was connected, Walsh asked: "How is Worthy?" North Carolina freshman James Worthy, who has been recognized as a future superstar, has good speed and agility, and everyone in the NBA cares his situation.

"Forget about Worthy," Doug Mo replied, "Here's a player who's going to be very, very great!"

"Who?" Walsh asked.

"A kid named Jordan. Mike Jordan."

"Is he that good?"

"Donnie, I didn't say good, I said great. I said Jerry West and Oscar Robertson. "

Doug Mo's attitude surprised Walsh.Walsh knew Doug Moe, knew that he rarely gave high marks to people, because he thought highly of himself and always felt that the people who came after him were not good enough.And this time, Doug Mo actually compared a high school kid with Jerry West and Oscar Robertson-at the time, those were the two greatest guards in basketball history!

Soon, Doug Mo's words spread, at least in the North Carolina alumni circle, everyone knew about Jordan's existence.

That's when Roy Williams decided to reach out and help arrange for Jordan to attend Howard Garfinkel's five-star training camp.The five-star training camp not only attracts the best players, but also differs from other training camps in that the quality of the coaches here is very high.Some of the best high school and college basketball coaches in the United States will come to the five-star training camp to coach.

Roy Williams called Garfunkel, told him about Jordan, asked him if there was any room for Jordan in the training camp, and suggested that they put Jordan with the top players.Roy Williams thinks he's doing the right thing.He was sure that sooner or later, Jordan would go to some kind of training camp, and such a good player couldn't have been kept a secret.At the same time, he was helping a local coach in North Carolina—for Jordan's high school coaches, it was definitely a good thing for Jordan's high school coaches to send his best players to a top-notch training camp and receive better training.In addition, Roy Williams also chatted with Garfunkel's assistant Tom Konchalski about Jordan's situation.Both Garfunkel and Koncharski speculate that the North Carolina coaching staff has seen and liked Jordan, but they're still not sure how good Jordan is due to the limited level of competition at Dean Smith's basketball camp. I wanted to see how he played against the best players in his age group, so I sent him five stars.Garfunkel was more than happy to help.

(End of this chapter)