Michael Jordan is the man of the hour and it’s very normal to see everybody talking about him in recent days. We’ve seen how fans have started to bring old Jordan interviews back to life and they are just great. We already saw his epic joke about his family height and the milkman and now we rediscovered an old interview from 2013, where Jordan picked the four players that would be a success in his era.
Talking with Wright Thompson of ESPN.com ahead of his 50th birthday, MJ engaged in a long chat. One of the most interesting things he discussed was which player from that year could get the same success in his era.
“JORDAN PLAYS his new favorite trivia game, asking which current players could be nearly as successful in his era. “Our era,” he says over and over again, calling modern players soft, coddled and ill-prepared for the highest level of the game. This is personal to him, since he’ll be compared to this generation, and since he has to build a franchise with this generation’s players.
“I’ll give you a hint,” he says. “I can only come up with four.”
He lists them: LeBron, Kobe, Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki.”
Only one of those players remains active at this moment, LeBron James. Kobe, Duncan and Nowitzki finished their career as legends, taking their teams to win the NBA championship at least once, having a wonderful career in the association, racking up individual and collective awards.
He considered Kobe a little brother, as he said during Bryant’s memorial service last February. Before that, Jordan had revealed Tim Duncan was a great player, one to be careful of when he was starting his career with the San Antonio Spurs.
After all the things Dirk did with Mavericks, he earned the respect of everybody around the league, including His Airness. As for LeBron, we all know he’s a player for the ages; his talent, skillset and basketball IQ would place him as one of the best players in the league during Jordan’s era.
Jordan’s voice matters a lot. He’s widely considered the greatest player of all time, and he giving that praise to those legends says a lot about all of them.
