What does it take? (Part 1): Michael Jordan

Inside the mind of a super competitor.

Feb 04, 2024

“You could argue that MJ was as good at his job as anyone has ever been at their job, in anything.” - Mark Vancil

During his time, Michael Jordan was a household name. Yet aside from his basketball genius, he also had an iconic persona.

This piece is an exploration into what made him Great.

What does it take?

It started in the family

MJ’s work ethic started within his family. His parents were “naturally tough”, they pushed their kids to have a certain mindset. They used to say things like:

You get knocked down, but you gotta get up and always give it your best.

Don’t wait for somebody to give you something. You’re strong and you’re intelligent, now go out and earn it.

But on another side of it was a tormenting relationship he had with his father.

Michael’s father pushed everybody.

Growing up, Michael’s brother Larry was actually better at basketball than Michael was. And their rivalry was fueled by their father.

Michael said that he fought and competed with Larry for his father’s attention.

When you’re going through it, it’s traumatic. But I kept going because I wanted that approval. I don’t think I’d be here without the confrontations with my brother.

One evening, Michael’s father humiliated him in front of his brothers. He said something that would continue to glow in Michael’s memory for decades.

“JUST GO ON IN THE HOUSE WITH THE WOMEN.”

His father's mean words activated deep within Michael some errant strain of DNA, a competitive nature so strong as to almost seem titanium. Years later, during the early days of his NBA career, Michael confessed that it was his father's early treatment of him, and his dad's declaration of his worthlessness that became the driving force that motivated him.

Each accomplishment that Michael achieved was a battle-cry to defeat his father's negative opinions of him. Michael paid him back again and again by achieving so much in a life that his father could never hope to grasp.

That is what offspring of disapproving fathers often do. Without even realizing it, they lock in on an answer and deliver it over and over, confirming that they do NOT need to just ‘Go in the house’. And they continue to confirm it even after the father has gone to dust, as if they are unconsciously yelling across time in an argument with their old man.

Carrying such weight from early life required unfathomable sources of energy.

Where did he get it?

Adversity into Fuel

A superpower Michael developed was an ability to turn adverse events into fuel.

After getting cut from the basketball team in high-school, he trained even harder to develop his game. He became so obsessed and determined to prove that he was worthy, when many others might have quit basketball and focused on other sports.

He’s always looking in some place to find something to get him all fired up. He used that for every single game.

We saw relentless display of this “bounce back stronger” attitude from Michael in the NBA.

“The Shot”

By MJ’s sixth NBA year—despite incredible performances—he still hadn’t won a championship, and the Bulls were still not considered a winning team.

They came up against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs. The deciding game was going back to Cleveland, and fans were beginning to write the Bulls off.

Determined to prove the naysayers wrong, Michael ends up hitting the game-winning shot at the buzzer. He then breaks into celebration screaming: “GO HOME ***** GO HOME”.

Play clip.

Extreme competitiveness

In Roland Lazenby’s Biography, The Life, on Michael Jordan, he says the following:

It took the fewest of words to set him off. Sometimes nothing more than a smirk. Only much later would the public come to understand just how incapable he was of letting go of even the tiniest details.

He would seize on meaningless cracks or gestures and plunge them deep into his heart.

My innate personality is to win at all costs; if I’m going to have to do it myself, then I’m going to do it. When I step onto the court, my focus is to win. It drives me insane when I can’t. - MJ

His competitiveness made him not only want to retaliate, but to dominate, when he felt rebuked.

The LaBradford Smith Story

“Michael could make things up to motivate himself.”

In a game against the Washington Bullets, Michael couldn’t make a basket.

After the game, one of Washington’s players, LaBradford Smith, went over to Michael and said: “Nice game, Mike.”

The next night, they played again… and Michael came back with a vengeance.

He took such umbrage at a guy because he said ‘Nice game, Mike’, that he torched and humiliated him in front of 20,000 people.

BJ Armstrong (one of MJ’s teammates at the time) said: I’ve never seen a man go after another the way MJ went after LaBradford the night after.

The crazy part?

Fast forward to decades later, and—supposedly—this never even happened. LaBradford Smith never said “Nice game, Mike.”

Startled, reporters went to Michael and asked if this ever happened, and he said:

No, I made it up.

There’s nothing he would not do in order to get himself to that place, where he's going to beat you.

MJ on the 1993 Championship Finals:

I was a little bit upset that I didn’t get the MVP that year and that they gave it to Charles Barkley. But with that, I said OK—fine, you can have that. I’m going to get the Championship.

When he scored 63 against the Celtics in the Playoffs, Larry Bird famously said:

That wasn’t Michael Jordan out there. That was God disguised as Michael Jordan.

Mindset

MJ—like many of the Greats—was able to master his mind.

You've got a lot of guys with ability, but they don’t have control of their mind.

The mind will play tricks on you, the mind will tell you that you can't go any further. The mind will tell you how much it hurts. The mind is telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past that and turn it all off if you're going to get to where you want to be.

MJ was constantly focused on the present moment. He didn’t waste energy on what he couldn’t control. He always looked at the positive—what he could still influence.

Seeing how he phrased things gives us a glimpse of this.

After losing the first game of the ‘91 finals by two points, he knew they could still win the series. He said: In our minds we knew we could win because we had a close game, and we didn’t even play well.

His response after a playoffs game loss against Indiana: We’ll be fine. Today was just a bump in the road. I don’t care what happens, they still gotta come through Chicago.

Time and time again, he focuses on the advantages he still has, and his words show a clear message: it’s not over till it’s over.

When coming back from injury, he famously said:

“Everybody is just thinking about the negative. There’s only a 10% percent chance that I get injured again, but a 90% chance that I don’t.”

Most people live in fear because they project the past into the future. Michael’s a mystic. He was never anywhere else. His gift was not that he could jump high, or run fast, or shoot a basketball. His gift was that he was completely present, and that was the separator.

Putting in the work, no matter what

MJ had an unwavering commitment to practice, to getting better every day. He was extremely coachable—he soaked up information like a sponge.

In his words:

I'm pulling up to practice 45 minutes early, and when I'm in practice, I'm practicing like it's game seven of the NBA Finals. And when it's over I'm pulling in coaches and teammates saying teach me more, teach me more, teach me more!

He focused on the little things. He said that the little things added up to the big things.

When Michael returned to the NBA from Baseball, the Bulls lost to the Orlando Magic in the playoffs.

And Michael didn’t waste a second. His trainer Tim Grover recalls (from right after the loss):

After the season, usually there’s a time period where Michael takes some time off.
The night they lost to Orlando in the playoffs of his return, I said: Michael, let me know when you want me to see you for training.
He said: I’LL SEE YOU TOMORROW.

By the time training camp started, he was frothing at the mouth. That’s how angry he was from losing. — Steve Kerr

Strict Leadership

Winning has a price. Leadership has a price. I pulled people along when they didn’t want to be pulled, challenged people when they didn’t want to be. - MJ

MJ’s approach was to go out and win—period. This was the regimented mentality he brought to his teammates. And if they didn’t want to take it, then he was going to “ridicule” them until they got to the same level.

Even after the Bulls became one of the most successful franchises, MJ still maintained this tough standard over himself and his teammates. He never forgot the price he had to pay to grind to the top.

I wanted them to understand what it felt like to be in the trenches. And if you don’t understand, then you’re not going to be able to respond when the war starts.
You can’t come in riding high because you play for the Bulls if you had nothing to do with the championships they won before—it doesn’t work like that. We were shit when I got here. And we had to do certain things to become a championship team. Everyone has to do those things.
Ask any of my teammates. The one thing Michael Jordan did was that he never asked anybody to do something that he didn’t fucking do himself.

He knew that becoming a championship team would require players to keep pushing the boundaries of their game. He had to lead by example.

A leader has to be willing to sacrifice to help everyone else get to where the team needs to go.

No one could take days off with the Bulls because I never took a day off. That’s what leaders do. They set a standard and everyone has to live up to that standard, it’s the same in every great organization. You have to rise to our level, we are not going to drop down to yours. I apply that standard to whatever I do.

Evolution as a player

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.

Despite his incredible performance, It wasn’t until MJ adopted a more team-oriented mindset that he started to win championships.

In his early years, he relied on himself. He felt that it was up to him to make a difference. But that only got him so far.

For seven seasons the Bulls were without a Championship. It became apparent that to win a championship, it was going to take more than one person—he was going to have to play a different game.

MJ began to understand that he didn’t have to have the ball in his hands all the time.

For someone going through such a meteoric rise in success, having to change and reorient how you play the game is an insanely difficult task— especially while things are at stake.

He had to realize that in order to make the progress that he and the Bulls needed, he would have to take a step backward first.

It would be one of the pivotal moments of his career, learning to redirect the tremendous drive and ego of his competitive nature into a team game.

You go slow now, so that you can go faster later. We will go slower on purpose, but we will go further and faster in the future.

This culminated in a defining moment: the final minutes of the 1991 Finals.

In his eighth NBA year, MJ began to change his approach.

During a timeout, with minutes left in the game, coach Phil Jackson asks Michael:

Phil: Michael, who's open?… MICHAEL, WHO’S OPEN?
Michael: PAX! [is open]
Phil: THEN PASS HIM THE FUCKING BALL

With the game on the line—instead of trying to go for it himself—Michael begins passing the ball to his open teammate over and over again.

“He starts trusting his teammate to make the shot.”

The Bulls end up winning their first championship.

At the end of his career, he reflects on how he changed the way he played the game, and how he evolved as a player.

MJ: In ‘91-’92 I was young, full of energy, hungry. In ‘98, when you’re winning six out of eight and yet being just as dominant as you were in ‘91, that’s where the craftsmanship came in. And I think ‘98 was much better than any of the years because of how I was able to use my mind as well as my body.

The outward deception of success

"Some players look at me for all the wrong reasons. They don’t understand the foundation I had to create to do everything that came afterward. They don’t know about lifting weights at 7am, practicing hard every day, finding ways to motivate myself for every game, sitting up half the night with an ankle in a bucket of ice, or being hooked up to an electronic stimulation machine. They don’t know about any of those things."