Sports Illustrated's Peter King writes about professional football, but today he snuck an old Michael Jordan chestnut into his still-wildly popular Monday Morning Quarterback column.
It's the sort of story that abounds from Jordan's playing days at North
Carolina but that probably doesn't get told enough, and it almost says
more about Dean Smith than it does Michael Jordan: The next morning, early, a few writers (I remember college friend Tony Grossi of the Cleveland Plain Dealer) went out to the lakefront airport in New Orleans to see the team before it jetted back to Chapel Hill. There, we spoke to James Worthy and Matt Doherty about winning the title, and off in the distance I noticed Jordan, who'd thrown down the winning shot nine hours earlier, in a coat and tie with a shirt about three neck sizes too big, with his big gym bag slung over his shoulder, carrying a film projector in his right hand and eight or nine canisters of film in his left hand. Yes, film. Those were the days of real film, not videotape. I said to Doherty: "Why is Jordan carrying all that stuff?" Doherty said, "The freshman always carries the film and the projector.''
King ends with a quip -- "Read that, college coach enablers." -- but the truth of the matter is that the difference between today's treatment of star freshman athletes and yesteryear's is options. In Jordan's day, the rules were simple: You went and played college basketball. You might only do it for one year, but you played. Even with the age limit in place, today's stars have many, many more basketball options. They also have greater competition for their skills and more coaches who are willing to do the unethical, let alone the player-friendly, to win their services. This has always been the case, but it's worse than ever now.
Anyway, it's a great anecdote, and it tells a story -- not only about Michael Jordan, who was irrevocably formed by his time at North Carolina, but about Dean Smith, a guy who managed to mix the harshness of the old school with the familial nature of a players' coach. There's a reason he was so successful.
