Michael Jordan never was the type of player that hid from challenges. Jordan was and is extremely competitive, showcasing all his passion and fierceness during his days with the Chicago Bulls. He received a lot of challenges during and after his NBA career. MJ lived for that and for shutting people down when they dared to say something about Jordan’s quality on the floor.
However, there were some battles that he preferred to avoid since he didn’t consider them necessary. That was the case of NFL legend Terrell Owens, who tried to make the case for himself to join the NBA, claiming that he would beat His Airness in a pickup game.
Derek Anderson recently appeared on ESPN’s The Truth Podcast, co-hosted by NBA Buzz owner Mikey Domagala and Pro basketball player Jermaine Barnes, explaining one of the biggest trash-talking stories of Jordan.
When Owens claimed he could be good in the league, Michael said he couldn’t play in the Los Angeles Clippers (one of the worst teams in the league at the time). Owens didn’t like that and challenged MJ to a 1-on-1 game (1:28:00 mark).
“Terrell said ‘I think I can make it to the league’ and MJ said ‘you can’t play for the Clippers, Terrell.’ So they started talking trash and Terrell said ‘let’s go play one-on-one’ and MJ said ‘if you can beat my son (Marcus), you can play me one-on-one.’ He never played the son, so Terrell is like ‘I can beat him.'”
It’s unclear when did this happen but it looks like it was during MJ’s last retirement when Marcus and Jeffrey Jordan were in college. Of course, none of them did the things that his father did but they managed to have good careers outside basketball. However, going against Marcus Jordan would have been a very good option to see what Terrell Owens could have brought to the league.
