Michael Jordan_ The Life ( PDFDrive.com )_compressed (1)_compressed

old Chestnut Street School, where the city held a youth basketball league.
Billingsley, twenty-four at the time, was coaching against the team the Jordans
played on. “If you saw them, you’d think Larry was the younger one,” he said.
“Michael was so much taller. Even then Larry was not the player Michael was,
and by a long shot.”
Larry recalled that it was actually their youth baseball coach who had gotten
them involved in basketball. Dick Neher was helping to form a youth hoops
team and phoned Ned Parrish, who had coached Michael in youth baseball.
Parrish had immediately suggested the Jordan boys.
In a 2012 interview, Neher laughed at the memory of the younger Jordan on
that basketball team. “He was a big-time gunner,” the coach recalled. “He had
never played organized ball. His Little League baseball coach had put him on the
team. He was a good dribbler. He could handle the ball. He was quick. But if
you gave him the ball you’d never see it again. It was going up to the hoop. We
laughed about it.”
Billingsley’s team played three games against those first basketball
Jordanaires and won two of them mostly because Billingsley’s team played manto-man
while the rest of the teams in the league played the stiff and lazy zone
defenses typical of youth basketball.
Billingsley assigned his star player, Reggie Williams—who later played
some college ball—to guard Jordan. “Michael was their best player. To show
you how smart he was even at that age, he posted up Reggie and hit a short jump
shot in the lane,” the coach recalled. “Even at twelve years old he already had
real basketball skills and smarts.” Billingsley believed that such a move was
instinctive, that no youth coach could have had the time or inclination to teach
something like that.
“When I was twelve years old, my brother Larry and I were the starting
backcourt in Pee Wee League,” Jordan remembered of the experience. “He was
the defensive guy, and I was the scorer. So I hit the winning basket, and as we
were riding home, my father said, ‘Larry, that was great defense you played.’
I’m saying, ‘Damn, I stole the ball and scored the winning layup.’ In my mind
I’m thinking that evidently my father didn’t see what I did, so I had to show him.
It’s funny how you look at those situations and all the steps that led to your
competitive attitude.”
In baseball, it had been the same, he recalled. He would go for a home run,
Larry would aim for a base hit, and his father would always say, “Larry, that’s a
great attitude to have, going for the base hit.”