Rarely does Michael Jordan pick up a basketball these days.
In an interview with NBC’s Mike Tirico during coverage of the NBA season opener on Tuesday, Jordan said it had been, in fact, years.
But prodded by Tirico, he recalled an instance just last month.
Jordan, viewed by many as the greatest of all time and renowned for his unmatched competitiveness en route to six NBA titles, was renting a house with a basketball court during the Ryder Cup in New York.
When the owner came over along with his grandchildren for a meet-and-greet, he asked Jordan to shoot a free throw.
“When I stepped up to shoot the free throw, it’s the most nervous I’ve been in years. The reason being is, those kids heard the stories from their parents about what I did 30 years ago. So their expectation is 30 years prior and I haven’t touched a basketball,” Jordan said.
Tirico responded: “I hope you swished it.”
“Absolutely,” Jordan confirmed. “That made my whole week is that I was able to please that kid not knowing if I could.”
Jordan, 62, joined NBC as a special contributor as the network regained live television rights for the NBA for the first time in over 20 years.
In a series called “MJ: Insights to Excellence,” he said he makes a conscious decision to prioritize time with family over being seen more in the public basketball eye.
That said, he also acknowledged a desire to “pay it forward.”
“I have an obligation to the game of basketball … as a basketball player is to be able to pass on messages of success and dedication to the game of basketball,” Jordan said during the halftime segment.
Jordan’s presence was part of a night where NBC delicately blended both the present with the past. The intro included some players from this era asked for their memories of when the game was on NBC, and of course, many of them didn’t have any memories since they either weren’t born yet or were very young.
John Tesh’s famed “Roundball Rock” — the soundtrack that was NBC’s NBA theme music through 2002 — was back, and with some help from artificial intelligence, so was the voice of the late Jim Fagan, a longtime NBC Sports narrator who was part of those NBA broadcasts a generation ago.
Jordan starred on plenty of those games. Now, he’ll talk during some.
And, of course, that competitive fire still burns bright.
“I wish I could take a magic pill, put on shorts and go out and play the game of basketball today,” he said. “Because that’s who I am. That type of competition, that type of competitiveness is what I live for. And I miss it. I miss that aspect of playing the game of basketball.”
–with files from The Associated Press
