Coming into the NBA in 1984 as a sensational guard out of North Carolina, 6ft 6’, Michael Jordan, wasn’t the highest-rated player of his class. It was Houston’s 7-footer Hakeem Olajuwon, who went to the Rockets as they had the #1 pick. The Blazers had the 2nd pick but didn’t pick MJ because they were sticking to the 14th pick of the 83’ Draft, Clyde Drexler, as their franchise player. Jordan himself, having a certain opinion on going to Portland, was not heartbroken about being selected 3rd by the Bulls, despite his famous drive to be #1 all the time.
Advertisement
No team in the history of basketball would have regretted snubbing a player as much as the Blazers would, with Jordan. Although their 6ft 7′ guard-forward went on to become one of the best players in the history of the sport, Drexler could not get out of the shadow of Jordan in his time with the franchise that drafted him.
Clyde did go on to develop a rivalry with ‘His Airness’. However, it was only MJ who benefited from it. By 1992, before they first met in the NBA Finals, Drexler had taken major steps toward a Hall of Fame Career. By that time, Jordan was already on his way to being the greatest ever.
However, none of it would have played out the way it did, if the Portland Trail Blazers had drafted Jordan.
Michael Jordan thought teaming up with Clyde Drexler would be ‘dumb’
Making it into the Bulls’ starting line-up from Day 1 as a shooting guard, Jordan felt right at home. He was getting 38+ minutes right from his rookie season. If the Blazers had picked Mike, he would have shared minutes with Clyde, something that would likely result in neither of them getting much game time. Especially not as much as they each did during the 84’-85 season.
Going off this note, Playboy magazine once asked him to comment on being snubbed by the Blazers for Clyde Drexler, after he defeated him in the NBA Finals. The following was his answer, as per Ballislife’s article on Playboy Magazine’s 1992 interview.
Playboy: The Blazers had a shot at drafting you. How would that have changed your life?
Jordan: I wouldn’t have had all this opportunity from a business and financial standpoin.
Playboy: Would your life have been any easier?
Jordan: No, this has gone exactly the way I wanted it to. Portland already had Clyde Drexler, so it would have been dumb for me to go there.
Surely, playing in Portland, could not have resulted in him teaming up with Scottie Pippen and going on to win 6 championships. And of course, that in turn would have likely held him back from becoming the superstar he went on to be. So, it’s hard to disagree with him on this one.
That said, Michael still didn’t like Clyde very much. In fact, he despised being put in the same sentence as him so much, that he created an all-time moment as he humiliated him in the NBA Finals.
How did Jordan put an exclamation mark to his rivalry with Drexler?
In the 1992 NBA Finals, the defending champions, Chicago Bulls, could not get the hang of Drexler’s Blazers. The series started with Michael Jordan coming up with 6 threes in the 1st half of Game 1. He followed that up with that famous “shrug” looking at Magic Johnson in the commentary box.
He led the Bulls to win Game 1, scoring 39 points in the process. Scored the same in Game 2 but failed to get the win. Following this, they shared wins in games 3 and 4, bringing this series level at 2-2. In Game 5, Jordan wanted to put the series to bed all by himself. However, by the 4th quarter, the Bulls were down 13. Head Coach, Phil Jackson, then tried to pull one of the most daring coaching decisions of all time by benching MJ and letting Pippen try to get back with 4 bench players.
It worked, as the Bulls won Game 5 with one of the greatest comebacks ever, before going on to take Game 6 as well, behind Jordan’s 33. He received the Finals MVP, which would just be his 2nd of 6. Drexler however, would never win it for the Blazers, instead being forced to join Hakeem Olajuwon and the Rockets in 1995 to do so.
