Michael Jordan is infamous for taking things personally.
The NBA great’s revelation on Netflix series ‘The Last Dance’ that he would invent perceived slights from opponents in his mind to fire himself up for games sparked a meme frenzy.
By the time he quit the NBA for a third time in 2003 — this time for good — Jordan was the face of the world’s biggest sportswear brand, a six-time NBA champion, five-time MVP and one of the richest athletes ever.
But he still had a giant chip on his shoulder.
His Airness was enshrined into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009 to complete the career arc every player dreams of.
The tears were flowing as soon as he took the podium, long before he paid tribute to mom Deloris in an emotional speech.
Jordan had plenty of people to thank and also revealed what may have been the first time he took things personally.
This time the slight was real — and the offending parties were the high school coach who cut MJ and his friend that had the audacity to be picked ahead of him.
Clifton ‘Pop’ Herring, was the coach at Emsley A. Laney High School, in Wilmington, North Carolina, when a teenage Jordan was beginning his career.
With no returning players over 6ft 3in, Herring decided to pick a rising star sophomore for the varsity roster — a rare move in those days.
When a young Jordan, who was just 5ft 10in tall at the time, saw his name on the junior varsity roster, he was gutted.
When he saw fellow sophomore and close friend Leroy Smith — a 6ft 7in giant — on the full varsity squad, he was beside himself.
Air Jordan went home and cried in his room.
The decades later, he hadn’t let it go and went into a rant during his Hall of Fame enshrinement as the cameras picked out a bemused Smith.
“And then there’s Leroy Smith,” said Jordan. “Now you guys think that’s a myth.
“Leroy Smith was a guy when I got cut he made the team — on the varsity team — and he’s here tonight. He’s still the same 6ft 7in guy, he’s not any bigger, probably his game is about the same.
“But he started the whole process with me, because when he made the team, and I didn’t, I wanted to prove not just to Leroy Smith, not just to myself, but to the coach that picked Leroy over me, I wanted to make sure you understood, ‘You made a mistake dude,’”
Jordan’s hit list did not stop there.
Next up was Buzz Peterson, who was named 1981 high school player of the year in North Carolina ahead of him.
The two would go on to be roommates at UNC and Peterson is now the Charlotte Hornets’ assistant general manager.
“Buzz was a great person, it wasn’t a fault of his, it was just my competitive nature,” said the Chicago Bulls icon. “I didn’t think he could beat me, or that he was better than me as a basketball player. He became my roommate.
“And from that point on he became a focal point — not knowingly, he didn’t know it — but he did.”
Tar Heels coach Dean Smith, who was also there to watch Jordan’s enshrinement before tragically passing away in 2015, also took some flak for not putting Jordan down as a starter on a Sports Illustrated cover when he was a rookie.
The fact Jordan kept receipts from his time in high school and college and refused to let them go even after making the Hall of Fame shows a level of pettiness that may have been the driving force behind his storied career.
