Michael Jordan’s brother Larry was a talented basketball player but he never made it in the NBA for one key reason.
Michael Jordan is widely considered to be the greatest basketball player of all time but His Airness has revealed that his brother was a bigger prospect.
On an episode of his JRE podcast, UFC commentator Joe Rogan discussed Larry Jordan and how ‘MJ’, born 11 months apart, took so many elements from his sibling and used it in his game.
“Whatever happened with him, I don’t know if he played professionally but his brother’s a killer player. “The dude was f***ing good.”
Jordan memorably said that the late Kobe Bryant was the only play who would beat him in a one-on-one game but his older brother had his number growing up.
“Michael Jordan’s brother, a lot of Michael’s moves, you see his brother do,”
In a rare video from the 1987/1988 season, Jordan admitted: “When you say Air Jordan, I’m No.2, he’s 1.”
In an interview Scoop Jackson for the July 1996 issue of SLAM Magazine, Jordan revealed Larry would always get the better of him and that would later helped shape him into a six-time NBA champion and arguably the best to ever grace the court.
Jordan said: “Man, my older brother Larry used to kill me! “He was older and bigger than me. He would beat me, talk to me, and not let me forget about it. What that did for me was make me work that much harder to beat him. He had no idea that I was going to end up taller than him. I look at my games with him as a great experience when I was young because I developed my love for the game, and it made me work harder to get better.”
Larry had similarly brilliant athletic qualities, including an insane 44-inch vertical leap which allowed him to dunk with ease.
Both attended Emsley A. Laney High School but only one Jordan made the 1978 varsity team and it wasn’t Michael. However, the big sticking point which hindered Larry was his size.
“He has always been a good player, but he just didn’t grow enough,” Jordan claimed on his sibling.
In an interview Scoop Jackson for the July 1996 issue of SLAM Magazine, Jordan revealed Larry would always get the better of him and that would later helped shape him into a six-time NBA champion and arguably the best to ever grace the court.
Jordan said: “Man, my older brother Larry used to kill me! “He was older and bigger than me. He would beat me, talk to me, and not let me forget about it. What that did for me was make me work that much harder to beat him. He had no idea that I was going to end up taller than him. I look at my games with him as a great experience when I was young because I developed my love for the game, and it made me work harder to get better.”
Larry had similarly brilliant athletic qualities, including an insane 44-inch vertical leap which allowed him to dunk with ease.
Both attended Emsley A. Laney High School but only one Jordan made the 1978 varsity team and it wasn’t Michael. However, the big sticking point which hindered Larry was his size.
“He has always been a good player, but he just didn’t grow enough,” Jordan claimed on his sibling.
Clifton ‘Pop’ Herring,a coach knew both brothers, said that if Larry was 6 ft 2, Michael would have been known as his brother.
But Larry only ended up 5 ft 8, whereas Michael had a massive growth spurt which saw become 6 ft 4 in his senior year and ultimately ended up getting a basketball scholarship at the University of North Carolina before becoming the third overall NBA draft pick in 1984 and ultimate the biggest star in the history of the sport.
