Michael Jordan is widely viewed as the greatest shooting guard of all time, and he was well-known for his ability to score at will. While scoring was his greatest ability, it is clear that Michael Jordan also excelled at other parts of the game.
Reddit user RondoJr has recently revealed that in 1989, coach Doug Collins ended up making Michael Jordan a point guard after the superstar “expressed frustration” at how the team’s offense worked. Michael Jordan had insane production as a point guard, even having a stretch where he notched 10 triple-doubles in 11 games.
In 1989, Bulls head coach Doug Collins decided to switch Michael Jordan to play PG after MJ expressed frustration at the team’s offense. Over the final 24 games of that season, Jordan averaged 30.4 PPG, 9.2 RPG, and 10.7 APG, including a stretch where he had 10 triple doubles in 11 games.
His greatness continued into the playoffs, where he averaged an incredible 37.5 PPG, 7.8 RPG, and 8.3 APG on 62.2% TS through the first 2 rounds of the playoffs. It all came to an end when he ran into the Bad Boy Pistons in the ECF, where they were able to hold Jordan to only 29.7 PPG, 5.5 RPG, and 6.5 APG on 56.1% TS.
I feel like this is a look into the type of numbers MJ would put up in today’s NBA, especially if he played in a heliocentric system like Luka Doncic or James Harden.
This is an absolutely insane story, and this just shows that Michael Jordan would have likely been able to excel at either guard position, and it would have been fun to see him play point guard for a longer period of time.
At the end of the day, though, Michael Jordan was clearly best suited at shooting guard. His resume and accolades speak for themselves. Point-MJ was clearly an interesting experiment, but it didn’t result in any championship success.
