A story ran in today’s N&O about basketball legend Michael Jordan. The story aimed in part to debunk the widely-held belief that Michael Jordan was cut from the varsity basketball team at Laney High School in his hometown of Wilmington.
After reading this morning’s story I went to check Jordan’s Wikipedia entry. Sure enough, Wikipedia stated that Jordan was cut from the team:
He tried out for the varsity basketball team during his sophomore year, but at 5’11” (1.80 m), he was deemed too short to play at that level and was cut from the team. His taller friend, Harvest Leroy Smith, was the only sophomore to make the team.
(Note: it has since been updated in a way I can agree with.)
In an attempt to update Wikipedia I added a few sentences from the news story refuting the claim he was cut. It wasn’t long before one of the page maintainers invited me to discuss my changes on the page’s discussion page, so off I went. A cordial back-and-forth took place, where the page maintainer insisted that many references exist supporting the claim he was cut. Jordan himself has said so in multiple interviews. I had a few references (including the N&O’s) that took a different view.
So what is the truth? The simple answer is: who knows? Like all great legends, fact and fiction have blended over the years until one can’t tell the two apart. His JV coach, Fred Lynch, says he wasn’t cut as does his former PE coach, Ruby Sutton. On the other hand, a few of Jordan’s biographies seem to indicate he was cut.
And opinions are divided about what exactly “being cut” means. Does it mean that an athlete was on the team and then was dismissed, or that an athlete didn’t make the cut to begin with? Jordan tried out for varsity but wasn’t selected, which turned out to be a great turn of events in his basketball career. How you slice and dice that incident is really up to you.
And it wasn’t just that fact, but others that were called into question. Many supposedly authoritative sources couldn’t say for sure how tall Jordan was when he was supposedly cut. Some sources got his varsity and junior varsity coaches mixed up. Other sources claim he was cut from his junior varsity team! It’s all a big, jumbled mess – and in the scheme of things not really worth arguing about.
The paper says one thing, Jordan says another, Wikipedia agrees, and his coaches can’t say for sure. So much for putting the myth to rest!
People are always searching for truth. Truth, I’m finding out, often depends upon whom you ask.
what’s really cool is Jordan asking David Thompson to present him at the HOF ceremony.