Michael Jordan has been regarded as a deity in the NBA for nearly 40 years. ‘Black Jesus’ wasn’t just a nickname; it was genuinely how a lot of people felt about Jordan. Kevin Garnett, who had the pleasure of playing against MJ for five years in the NBA, has been very vocal about how much he admires the HoFer, and his latest words just go on to prove his point more.
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In the past, Garnett has made it clear how much he respects Jordan, not only for what he did as a basketball player but also for his business enterprises and how he laid the blueprint for every successful athlete today.
In fact, Garnett was put into his place by Jordan once after he failed in his attempt to trash talk him in an intense game. From then on, Garnett humbly bowed down to the man who is called the GOAT by many till date in the sport.
“I caught him. He was going two dribbles coming up left, and he was trying to reject baseline. So I played the middle. I said ‘Man, if he do this s*** again, I’ma pick this s***,” Garnett once said to Bones Hyland in an interview.
“Real story, the next time down, M called the same play. Bones, this is real life. I was in front of the n*****. I was right in front of him. I blinked, dog, and when my eyes opened, the n**** was at the cup (mimicking a layup).”
And Garnett’s latest act of praising MJ came after Jamal Crawford posted a reel of MJ’s “hidden tapes” on Instagram. In the clips, one could see ‘His Airness’ cooking defenders and scoring at will, while making it all look too easy.
The Big Ticket posted the reel to his stories and captioned it “The God.” His response makes it clear what he thinks— Jordan is the best basketball player to have ever lived, and Garnett isn’t afraid to deify him.
KG on his IG story pic.twitter.com/bhFQ4ODkc6
— tragicpatek (@tragicpatek) March 16, 2025
This, of course, comes as no surprise. Jordan has long been hero-worshipped by the NBA and its players, even if they were consistently on the receiving end of his legendary scoring games and trash talk.
But not everyone put Jordan on such a pedestal. And the one player who didn’t and yet became mega successful was the late Kobe Bryant.
Kobe the biggest name to disagree with Garnett
Michael Jordan popularly became known as Black Jesus after Larry Bird’s words about him after a playoff game in 1986.
Jordan walked into the TD Garden, and in an unprecedented show of skill, gave the Celtics 63 points. After the game, Bird was famously quoted saying, “It was God disguised as Michael Jordan.”
The nickname took on a life of its own after that, with many of his peers and his successors using it to refer to him in interviews and other media appearances.
However, Kobe was unfazed by Jordan’s reputation and never referred to him as Black Jesus. Kobe, who is often regarded as the closest thing to MJ, once made a public claim post-retirement, explaining how he first heard of the Black Jesus nickname.
He revealed how he used to train with the 76ers as a high school player and often asked the roster about Jordan. When they told him that they referred to him as Black Jesus, Kobe was taken aback.
“I used to ask ’em, ‘Man, what’s it like to guard Mike?'” he recalled. “‘Mike? You mean Black Jesus?’ I’m like what the f***? Black who?”
Clearly, the nickname was not something that intimidated Kobe, and he proved as much on the court.
