Was Michael Jordan really cut from his high school team?

[JonLP24]

It's the "story" of legend, even if the story was always a fictional tale. Michael Jordan, regarded for over a decade to be the best basketball player ever, was supposedly "cut" from his high school basketball team during his sophomore year. Jordan has brought it up endlessly, writers like Bob Greene and David Halberstam trumpeted the tale, and the idea that the Best Player Ever could not be included amongst the 10-best players in tiny Laney High School in Wilmington, N.C., back in 1979 tends to boggle the mind.

It should boggle the mind, because it isn't true. Not just that he wasn't amongst the 10 best, Jordan clearly was, but because MJ was never really "cut." He was sent to the JV team by a 26-year-old coach who was recently brilliantly profiled by Thomas Lake at Sports Illustrated. Coach Clifton Herring is a man who probably didn't think he'd be the subject of anything having to do with Sports Illustrated at the time, much less 30-some years later.

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Here's a clip:

In those days it was rare for sophomores to make varsity. Herring made one exception in 1978, one designed to remedy his team's height disadvantage. This is part of the reason Mike Jordan went home and cried in his room after reading the two lists. It wasn't just that his name was missing from the varsity roster.It was also that as he scanned the list he saw the name of another sophomore, one of his close friends, the 6'7" Leroy Smith.

Over the next three decades Jordan would become a world-class collector of emotional wounds, a champion grudge-holder, a magician at converting real and imagined insults into the rocket fuel that made him fly. If he had truly been cut that year, as he would claim again and again, he wouldn't have had such an immediate chance for revenge. But in fact his name was on the second list, the jayvee roster, with the names of many of his fellow sophomores. Jordan quickly became a jayvee superstar.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/michael-jordan-really-cut-high-school-team-215707476.html

[HuckleB]

1. Good story. I can believe Halberstam blew it.

That's actually the most disheartening part of the story for me.

[taterguy]

2. Halberstam's Jordan book was sloppy

He misidentified where Earl Monroe went to college, even though that was a semi-major part of the book.

There were several other little errors that I can't recall off the top of my head.

Made me wonder how accurate Halberstam's other books were.

[HuckleB]

3. Interesting.

I hadn't read that one, but it seems like "The Breaks of the Game" was fairly accurate. Certainly, it is one of the best sports books of all time, and it was discussed quite extensively in the northwest upon its re-publication a couple years ago, including many interviews with the players and coaches. No one seemed to have any problems with the book, which did cover some very difficult personal/professional items.

One does wonder if some authors tend to be less thorough once they've made a name for themselves.

[joeybee12]

4. "A world-class collector of emotional wounds..."

Yup.

[hughee99]

5. Having to play JV as a sophomore, what an insult!

I wonder if he's also pissed he didn't get recruited by the Globetrotters out of Junior High.

[ProfessorGAC]

6. Sorry hughee But I Don't Agree

Going to JV is, in fact, a demotion. I don't know how you or anyone else sees it differently. The kid (he was 15 at the time) expected to make the varsity team. He got demoted to JV. He was 15 and it made him feel bad. Why is that so hard to understand?

I wasn't a sophomore, but i would have felt slighted had i been demoted to JV in my junior year. I fully expected to make the team and i fully expected to start. Luckily, both happened. (Something for a 5'7" white kid to be proud of.) But, being demoted to JV would have felt to me like getting cut.

Then, when a guy who wasn't as good, just taller, made it, it stung a little more. I think you are all forgetting that he was literally a kid at the time. And, i think the author of the article is putting too fine a point on the difference between being cut and being demoted.

[hughee99]

7. He wasn't "demoted" to JV because that would imply he made the varsity team

We had a similar system in our high school. Everyone tries out for "basketball" (not specifically Varsity or JV), and in the end of tryouts you are assigned to one team or the other, (or neither). He may have expected to make the varsity team, but according to the article anyway, that was very rare. Another sophomore the same year made it, but that's because he was 6'7" and the team was hurting for size. Jordan set his expectations high and didn't quite reach them, he didn't make the first cut in tryouts, but that's not exactly the same thing as a demotion.

I can see where this could be motivating for someone, but it's not the "hey kid, you're not good enough to play basketball" that it's been made out to be.

[ProfessorGAC]

8. Huh?

If he wasn't demoted because he didn't make the team, it means HE WAS CUT FROM THE VARSITY TEAM! You're arguing against yourself.

[hughee99]

9. Perhaps we're just arguing terminology here...

As I see it, "demoted" means he got the job and then was sent down to JV. He never "got" the job. A guy who plays major league baseball and gets sent to AAA is "demoted". I guy who gets invited to spring training and ends up in the minor leagues is not. He tried out and didn't make it.

[LisaM]

10. He was never on the varsity team

Therefore, he wasn't demoted and he wasn't cut.

He does, however, seem to be even more of a jerk than I thought he was before, if that's possible.