Sometimes basketball fans love to imagine the unimaginable. They push the legends they idolize into hypothetical situations to see if they could play out a moment that will never occur. There’s never a wrong answer, especially when the question involves Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.
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NBA legend John Salley was asked about such a moment during his recent interview with Vlad TV. The four-time champion was given a fictitious scenario: 10 seconds left in the game, and you have to pass the ball to either His Airness or the Black Mamba, who does it go to?
“Mike,” responded Salley, who played with both players during his career. When the interviewer asked why MJ, he had a very predictable response. “Cause your coach told you to. If you want to keep your job, you better give it.”
Salley then explained that every team would always look to their top player to try and come up with a big moment in the final seconds of a game. “You want the star. If I’m on the team with Kobe, I’m giving it to Kobe,” he added. Vlad TV did try and make the game harder by telling Salley that in the scenario, both Kobe AND Jordan were on your team.
“If they were, whichever one was open,” he responded. “Kobe wouldn’t be Kobe without Michael. It’s kind of hard to do it that way. But you throw the ball to Michael.”
It’s one of those things where if you ask 100 people, you’d probably get 50/50 on who is taking the shot. Both MJ and Kobe were considered clutch kings. That said, they did miss more often than not when the game was on the line, and Salley wasn’t afraid to bring this up.
“Michael missed a lot of those shots too. The NBA was building a brand new brand, so you’re never gonna see those shots that Michael missed, you’re not gonna see them. You can look all day, you’re not gonna see them.” He wasn’t trying to bury MJ. In fact, he revealed that Jordan himself would probably tell you the same thing.
“He’ll tell you, ‘I missed a lot of shots to win the game that I didn’t hit. You’ll never see em.’ You only see the ones that go in. There’s clips just like that with Kobe,” he said. But Salley hesitated for a second afterward, and seemed to recall something the Mamba once told him about coming up clutch.
“‘I knew if I got to my spot and was in the air first, you couldn’t stop me.’ He said it became routine.”
The number of big shots that Jordan and Bryant landed in their careers will forever outweigh the larger number of times they missed. Both were built for the moment, and more importantly, weren’t afraid to fail.
Choosing which of these two Hall of Famers would take the shot comes down to personal preference. Not to bring LeBron James into this, but he would realistically give the same answer that Salley did. “Whichever one of them was open.” That’s what true ballers know. Make the buckets that count.
