YouTube Gold: A Michael Jordan Documentary

This was fun

Let’s start at the beginning: LeBron James is not better than Michael Jordan and it’s not particularly close.

To be clear, James has immense gifts and has an insanely long career, but if they had played at the same time, Jordan would have killed him, much as Bill Russell regularly took it to Wilt Chamberlain. Why?

Because like Russell, Jordan is a stone-cold killer and a basketball assassin. James is a brilliant talent, but he was never as ruthless, never as committed to winning as was Jordan.

This documentary about Jordan’s career gets into that, along with his rise from relative obscurity.

He was not seen as an elite high school project, although the late Howard Garfinkel saw him play in the summer and immediately called Street and Smith magazine to try to tell them to upgrade his ranking (he was too late; the magazine had already gone to press).

It talks about his high school years briefly, his time at UNC, the Olympic summer and of course his phenomenal career with the Chicago Bulls.

Time goes on and a lot of players are forgotten, but Jordan still seems like he played yesterday and he would dominate today just as easily. This is worth watching.

Incidentally, former Duke star Gene Banks makes a cameo at about 22:20.