After winning their sixth title in eight years in 1998, the Bulls disassembled the core that led them to those championships and decided to rebuild the team from the ground up. They wanted an heir for Michael Jordan and zeroed in on Michigan guard Jamal Crawford. His predecessor kept close tabs on his former team’s plan to replace him, and when they earmarked the 20-year-old, he decided to test him, not knowing he’d get schooled.
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On Podcast P with Paul George, Crawford reminisced about meeting Jordan and playing against him for the first time in an open run in Chicago. The retired guard revealed that the Bulls icon’s trainer Tim Grover called him and asked if he could come meet the six-time Finals MVP.
The youngster raced to a facility in downtown Chicago where Jordan and Grover were training. When Crawford saw him, he was awestruck. Jordan told the young guard that he was a fan of his game and invited him to his open runs. He accepted the invite and on the first day, he lined up against the Bulls icon. Recalling what transpired, Crawford said,
“The first day, I played against [MJ] and my team won. He was pissed… Then after that Grover called me and they were playing at 2 [PM]… He’s like, ‘Yo, what’s up? Get down here.’ I’m like, ‘I thought we wasn’t starting until 2.’ He’s like, ‘Man, get down here. MJ’s not starting the game until you get here. He’s waiting on you.’ I’m like, ‘Oh s**t.’ From that moment on, we never lost for two straight summers.”
It was the experience of a lifetime for Crawford. who got to spend two summers as a teammate of the player he believes is the greatest ever.
Jamal Crawford on the GOAT debate
The three-time Sixth Man of the Year award winner doesn’t only believe Jordan is the GOAT, but he also cannot fathom any other player displacing him from the mountaintop. During an appearance on the Jeremy Mills Podcast, he said,
“Michael Jordan is like, for basketball for me, he’s the end all, be all. Like he’s the best player I’ve ever seen, I believe he’s the best player I’ll ever see, I believe he’s the best player a million years from now… Put it like this, Michael Jordan is so good that when somebody else is at the top of the top, the greatest in the sport, they’ll say, ‘David Beckham is the Michael Jordan of soccer.’ Like he’s the king of kings, he’s the best.”
Watching him play when he was growing up and then sharing the court with him solidified Crawford’s stance that nobody will ever usurp Jordan as the greatest ever.
