One of the biggest regrets for NBA fans is that we can never witness Michael Jordan take on LeBron James. Jordan walked away from the game for good in 2003, just a few months before LeBron James entered the league as the stand-out high school prospect from his draft class. Jordan and LeBron James have had similar success in the NBA, but are very different players.
Regardless, both players are obsessed with winning and always striving to be the best. Jordan and LeBron define two separate eras in the NBA and have been the faces of the league for almost their entire stint in the NBA. But fans can’t help but wonder what a game between the two of them would look like.
Well, a game between the two did take place, but it was behind closed doors. Former NBA star Antoine Walker spoke in an interview about Michael Jordan. Walker revealed that Jordan approached him in 2001 when he was preparing for a comeback and asked him to train with him.
As part of these training sessions, Jordan invited players across the country to play with him. Players like Michael Finley, Juwan Howard, Quentin Richardson, Corey Maggette, Bobby Simmons, Tim Hardaway, and others.
One of the players lucky enough to get an invite was none other than LeBron James. James was a sophomore in high school at the time and making waves as a potential future superstar in the league.
According to Walker, all the players gave LeBron a concession because of his age. And they would split into two teams and play pick-up games together. Jordan, unsurprisingly, made sure the games were very competitive and was even talking trash to all the players around him.
“He called me. And he was like, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about making a comeback. I need you in the gym with me.'”
“We treated LeBron like a 16-year-old,”
“He’s going to pick Charles Oakley first. He’s always going to pick Oaks. And he’s going to pick a really good point guard. That’s one thing that always stood out. And then he likes to get less aggressive guys. Like, he’ll take a Bobby Simmons, the guys that aren’t really looking to score the basketball, so he can work on his game.”
“Michael likes to get his shots up now. He’s going to make sure he’s working on his game. So, that’s how Michael was.”
“Very competitive. All we talked about every day was winning. He used to give me so much stuff about not winning a championship.
“If you weren’t a winner, he had little respect for you.”
LeBron himself spoke about the experience of playing with Jordan last year. During those games, James didn’t get to play much, as most of the players were already in the league and were more experienced than him.
Bron says he got to play pickup against MJ when he was 16 years old.
MJ hit the game-winner and reportedly said "That's why they pay me $33M to do this." 😤
(via @uninterrupted) https://t.co/U6Kpn2qElS
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) May 19, 2020
But once they got tired, James got a chance to go up against his idol. LeBron quickly got to see what most players in the 80s and 90s saw: Jordan dominating the court, before hitting the game-winner. MJ even had some hilarious remarks after he hit the game-winning shot, screaming “that’s why they pay me $33 million to do this”.
“And the only reason I played is because the guys that was in the league you know, after a few hours some of them get tired,”
“For me to be on the court at 16 years old, sophomore in high school, with my favorite player of all time [Jordan] it was like, this can’t be real, man.”
An article by Grant Wahl in 2002, before James came into the league also addressed how sought-after LeBron James was as a high schooler. Despite him only being a high school senior at the time, many executives said they would draft him first overall if given the chance. On top of that, LeBron was looked at as a huge asset when it came to sponsorship deals.
LeBron was the talk of the entire basketball world and was considered a huge star before he even entered the league at that time.
All things considered, it’s hard to decide what’s more impressive–that LeBron could be hailed as the best high school player even though he’s only a junior, or that many NBA scouts believe he would be the first pick in this year’s draft (if league rules didn’t forbid his entering it), or that he can get an audience with Jordan as easily as a haircut appointment.
Then again, the world behind the velvet rope is nothing new to LeBron. Last summer he was the only schoolboy invited to play in Jordan’s top-secret workouts in Chicago. LeBron speaks regularly with Boston Celtics star Antoine Walker, who is his best friend among NBA players. Those floor tickets to the Cavaliers game? LeBron’s surrogate father, Eddie Jackson, simply made a call to Cleveland coach John Lucas. Already LeBron has hung out with Michael Finley, Tracy McGrady and Jerry Stackhouse, to say nothing of his favorite rapper, Jay-Z. “He’s a cool guy too,” LeBron says. “We went to his hotel first, and then I had backstage passes.”
Did we say LeBron just turned 17?
“At this age LeBron is better than anybody I’ve seen in 37 years in this business, including Kevin [Garnett] and Kobe [Bryant] and Tracy,” says Sonny Vaccaro, the Adidas rep who signed the first shoe deals with Jordan (for Nike), Bryant and McGrady.
Says Germantown (Pa.) Academy coach Jim Fenerty, who watched LeBron pile up 38 points and 17 rebounds in a 70-64 defeat of his Patriots in December, “We played Kobe when Kobe was a senior, and LeBron is the best player we’ve ever played against. LeBron is physically stronger than Kobe was as a senior, and we’ve never had anybody shoot better against us.”
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“If I were a general manager, there are only four or five NBA players that I wouldn’t trade to get him right now,” says former Phoenix Suns coach Danny Ainge, who was in Trenton to see LeBron play for the second time. “I love Jason Williams at Duke, and I’ve heard of the Chinese guy [7’6″ Yao Ming], but if LeBron came out this year, I wouldn’t even have to think about it. I’d take him No. 1.”
Jordan and LeBron have a different approach and a different mentality when it comes to the sport of basketball. But even in this scenario, one can only imagine how the games between the two went. Aside from a few details, we can never really know what went down in those games.
