I remember after practice saying to him, I had no idea you could pass that way. He was still attacking, but he wouldn’t shoot-he was kicking it out for threes or dropping it off to the bigs in the paint for dunks and layups. I was astonished that he had that kind of vision. “We started scrimmaging again,” Jones explains, “and Michael had the same aggression he usually had scoring the ball, but he looked like John Stockton or Magic Johnson. Jones, now an assistant with the Indiana Pacers, recalls a practice later on during the 2001-02 season when MJ was scoring so easily-looking like Prime Chicago Bulls MJ-that Collins stopped the scrimmage and instructed him not to shoot anymore. He said, This is no different than playing in Game 7 of the NBA Finals-competing is competing. “I just was like, What is wrong with you? We’re on the same team! You’re that competitive that you want to compete against me? I’m a role player. For the rest of the practice, not only did I not score, I didn’t even get a shot off,” Davis says. So Michael switched jerseys and went to the other team and he guarded me. “I was practicing really well, I was hitting everything. Davis remembers his jumper catching fire one day in practice when the two were paired up on the same team. But seeing the daily work ethic, preparation and competitiveness up close was something different. He was no longer doing it with the iconic black-and-red Bulls gear on his back, but as Davis puts it: “He was Michael.”ĭavis and Jordan both played at UNC (where Davis is now an assistant coach) and had competed in heated Bulls-Knicks playoff battles during the ’90s. Every morning at 7 a.m., they’d find a health club near the team hotel to go work out, like clockwork. Jordan’s personal trainer, Tim Grover, traveled with the Wizards on the road, too. “I saw people look at him and just start crying, craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” “It was like traveling with Michael Jackson or something,” says Thomas.
Then-rookie center Etan Thomas remembers fans who would fight through crowds just for a high-five from Jordan, then look at their hand like it was made of solid gold. Off the court, traveling with Michael Jordan also took some getting used to, as his god-like status precipitated a rockstar lifestyle on the road for an otherwise humdrum Wizards team. “He would get the ball and we would all just stand around and watch,” recalls Jones. For everyone on the roster, those first few practices with Jordan were surreal. Outside of Mike and budding star Richard Hamilton, the Wizards came into the ’01-02 season with a funky mélange of promising young talent and steady, if plodding, veterans. But let’s separate Jordan the player from Jordan the GM, at least for a few hundred words, shall we?)ĭoug Collins, who’d previously coached Michael in Chicago, was installed as the Wizards’ head coach and Washington held training camp in Jordan’s hometown that October, at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. 1 overall pick in the 2001 Draft, a decision that can only really be described as a huge misfire. Just a few months prior, he’d famously selected Kwame Brown straight out of high school with the No. “I’m going to play the game because I love it.” (And yes, Jordan’s track record as a Wizards executive is well-documented. I don’t care if I get paid a dime,” Mike continued. “I’m just going to play the game of basketball that I love. “What if I’m tired of playing in the YMCA and the Boys & Girls Club and I want to step up to the elite competition? “It’s an itch that still needs to be scratched here and I want to make sure this scratch doesn’t bother me for the rest of my life,” he told the assembled reporters at the MCI Center. He divested his ownership stake in the team and showed up at Wizards media day as a 38-year-old player. In September 2001, two weeks after the 9/11 attacks shook the nation’s capital, Jordan announced his intention to return to the hardwood after three seasons away.
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