Who knew the Jordan Crying meme started way before Twitter even existed.
There have been books written about Michael Jordan’s competitiveness, desire to win, and how he changed the game of basketball.
Every sports fan knows about MJ’s desire to the best in everything he did, from basketball to golf and even Ping-Pong.
Jordan takes all competition seriously, but what exactly drives his legendary motive to win?
Well, Sam Perkins may have just given us all an insight.
With The Olympics fully underway, Perkins was a guest on Sirius XM’s Above The Rim, hosted by Tim Legler and Tina Cervasio.
Eight years before USA Basketball turned its program to NBA players and created the Dream Team, college players filled the roster.
The 1984 team featured three players that would land on the 1992 Dream Team: Jordan, Patrick Ewing, and Chris Mullin.
Sam Perkins and Michael Jordan were teammates for Jordan’s entire tenure at North Carolina, including the 1982 National Championship team. They both went on to get drafted back-to-back in the 1984 draft.
Two months after the draft, the two were playing for Bobby Knight and the Olympic team. Bobby Knight is one tough cookie, but was it possible he made the GOAT cry?
On Above The Rim Perkins went on to say this:
“Bobby Knight, he got after us,” Perkins said. “He told Michael that’s the worst he ever played. Now Michael’s going to deny this, but he cried. He cried after the game, because of the fact that Bobby Knight told him, ‘You should apologize to everybody in here.’ I waited for my apology because I thought he was going to actually do it. But he actually cried.”
The strange part of the story is that USA won the game and Jordan didn’t play bad, finishing with 14 points, four rebounds, three assists, a steal, and six turnovers.
The six turnovers must have been the reason Knight flipped out on Jordan.
Perkins went on to say:
“We didn’t play that bad. It’s the fact that (Knight) just wanted us to wake up for the next game because anything could happen. That’s the way Bobby Knight coached.”
Fast forward from 1984 to 2016 and you can see a picture of Michael Jordan crying every single day.
As True Detective’s Rust Cohle would say “Time is a flat circle. Everything we’ve ever done, or will do, we are gonna do over and over again.”
So how long has Jordan been crying? Has he been crying forever? Did the crying pickup once he fell after Sam Bowie and was drafted by the Bulls perhaps? Was Jordan a meme before memes existed? Are we really going to get deep about Michael Jordan crying?
Yes, because this is the Internet and we like to have fun here.
Jordan is the greatest of all-time and the fact that a story of him crying 32 years ago makes the news cycle is a testament to that.
A story like this will never take away from anything he has done, if anything it humanizes him. Anything associated with USA Basketball should be fun since we are so dominant.
I need more fun stories like this frankly.
Follow Draymond Green on Snapchat to see just how much fun these guys are having in Rio. I know what you are thinking… don’t worry, I don’t think he will make the same mistake twice… hopefully.
