It never happened.
Despite the cast on his wrist, Jordan scored 25 points to go with Perkins’s 22 in the season-opening overtime loss to Chris Mullin and a deep St. John’s team, 78–74. A week later they traveled to St. Louis for a physical confrontation with Missouri. Again, they lost, 64–60, and it became clear there would be no absence of drama this season. Not surprisingly, each team they played came at them with maximum focus. Three days later, Tulane came to Chapel Hill with their impressive center John “Hot Rod” Williams. The contest wasn’t too old before the idea settled on the crowd that Carolina might just do the unthinkable—lose three straight games to open the season. No North Carolina team had done that since 1928–29.
The real trouble started when Perkins got his fifth foul at the 4:33 mark, which allowed the six-nine Williams more freedom to work. Tulane took a 51–49 lead. Jordan tied it with an offensive rebound and putback with thirty-six seconds left. Carolina then sent Williams to the line with eight seconds left, and he made both to put the Green Wave up two. Once again, Jordan found himself with the ball in the closing seconds. He made his move to the basket but was whistled for an offensive foul.
James Jordan sat between his two daughters watching the proceedings. “I thought, ‘We have lost this one,’ ” he recalled in a 1984 interview. Roslyn looked at him and said, “Daddy, you give up too fast.” The clock showed four seconds when Jordan stole the inbounds pass and tossed in a thirty-five-foot shot to tie the game at the buzzer. Carmichael erupted, but the tension was far from over.
The contest was settled finally with just under two minutes to go in the third overtime period when Jordan motored along the baseline, banked in a shot, and drew the foul to extend Carolina’s lead to five, enough to give the Tar Heels their first win of the year, 70–68.
“He started the season with a cast on his left wrist, and still he won a game for us against Tulane,” Smith recalled.
The schedule afforded few breaks. Next they faced LSU in the New Jersey Meadowlands, a game they won by four. They got their third win over Santa Clara in Greensboro and a week later headed to Tulsa at the start of the Christmas break in the Oil City Classic. The Golden Hurricane beat them by 10 in the first game. The Tar Heels were still adjusting to life without Worthy, who had given them not just a post game but lots of activity down low. Three days later they traveled to play UT–Chattanooga and found themselves down one with just under four minutes left. Jordan produced one of those “MJ moments,” scoring 11 of the team’s final 17 points to secure another win.
For the holidays, the Jordans packed up and followed the team to Honolulu for the Rainbow Classic, where in addition to luaus they feasted on three wins, including a 73–58 avenging of their earlier loss to Missouri. That sparked an eighteen-game winning streak. The Tar Heels arrived home and immediately took on Rutgers in Greensboro, then rode to Charlotte to measure their power against Syracuse before wading into the ACC schedule. Syracuse assistant Brendan Malone, Jordan’s coach at the Five-Star camp, had an opportunity to assess his progress. The Orangemen figured they’d test him with a double-team. “We trapped in the backcourt,” Malone recalled. “I was impressed by his poise under pressure. He took the double-team, dribbled away from it, got low, looked through the double-team, and made a perfect pass. He never panicked in that kind of situation.”
As a reaction to Smith’s stall in the 1982 ACC title bout, the conference had instituted a shot clock and a three-point shot on an experimental basis that season. No longer could Smith spread the floor and play cat and mouse to protect a thin lead. Nor could a team just sit mindlessly packed into a zone defense. Teams now had to have better plans for guarding the perimeter.
Jordan scored just 2 points in the first half at Maryland, then came alive with 15 in the second half. His big play, however, came at the end when he blocked a layup by Chuck Driesell, the son of Maryland coach Lefty Driesell, to save a 72–71 win.
The Tar Heels had yet to face Ralph Sampson and Virginia, but that didn’t mean the upcoming game wasn’t on their minds. Teammates Warren Martin, Curtis Hunter, and Brad Daugherty also roomed on the first floor of Granville Towers. “The day before the game the players were standing out in the hallway talking about the game, and they were scared to death,” David Mann recalled. “I mean people don’t realize how much Ralph Sampson was feared in those days. He was like Godzilla in the basketball world back then. Brad Daugherty was a freshman, and he didn’t want to have to go up against Sampson. So the guys are standing in the hall talking about what they’re going to do and how nervous they are. Michael’s sitting there and he’s not saying a word. And after a few minutes of this, all of a sudden he jumps up, about forty inches straight up, and slams his hand against the wall and screams out, ‘Fuck Sampson!’ ”
Startled, his teammates went silent.
“Everybody just sort of scattered after that,” Mann recalled with a laugh.
The teams’ first meeting the next day was broadcast on NBC from University Hall. Virginia was ranked second and the Tar Heels held the eleventh spot in the polls. The Cavaliers were also guarding a forty-two-game win streak on their home floor during the Sampson era. It was the first Virginia home game in almost six weeks, and the Tar Heel presence was enough to incite the nine thousand fans to cheer each time Sampson approached the basket in warm-ups. And they hooted when Smith stood by his bench, his NCAA championship ring glittering in the television lights. They chanted, “Sit down, Dean. Sit down, Dean.”
The Tar Heels immediately sandwiched Sampson in a zone and ran off a string of three-point goals for a 12-point lead. By halftime the air in the small arena was dead from disappointment. Smith put the seven-foot freshman Brad Daugherty at one of Sampson’s shoulders and six-foot-nine Sam Perkins at the other, with a wing player from either side also ready to collapse. The Tar Heels effectively denied him the ball while keeping the other Virginia players from establishing any offensive flow. Sampson hit only 2 of 8 field goal attempts in the first twenty minutes. Meanwhile, Perkins gave one of the best offensive performances of his career, scoring 25 points, including three three-point goals, in the first half.
After intermission, the arena settled into near silence as Sampson was called for his third and fourth fouls and North Carolina widened its lead to 23 points, at 85–62, with 9:41 remaining. Then, two minutes later, Sampson hit his first three-pointer of the season, a nineteen-foot shot from the left baseline, and Virginia began a comeback. Virginia’s Ricky Stokes, Jimmy Miller, Rick Carlisle, Tim Mullen, and Othell Wilson each scored. Then Sampson again. And Carlisle followed with a three-pointer. Within a five-minute span, the Wahoos had sliced the lead from 23 to 6 points. With two minutes remaining, and Carolina holding on, 96–90, Sampson rose up to the right of the lane for a short jumper. Jordan simultaneously leaped from the other side of the lane and ferociously smacked down the ball.
The play drew gasps along press row. Standing on the sideline, Virginia coach Terry Holland caught himself applauding. “Michael and David Thompson,” Holland recalled, “are the only two players that have made plays against my own team that made me applaud in sheer amazement… before I realized that I was cheering against my own team.
“I was also hollering at the referee that it ‘had to be goaltending’ at the same time,” Holland said. “I think the referees were as stunned and amazed as I was and could not figure out how he did it either. Technically, the block had to be goaltending—it had to be heading down since Ralph released it from above the rim. Looked like a Titan missile. Not sure why he would even think about going after it.”
“That was back in my young days,” Jordan said fifteen years later, admitting that he had no idea he could make the play. “I surprised myself. That was the beauty of my game, and it has propelled me to my career to some degree. No one could sit there and tell you what I could do. I couldn’t tell you what I couldn’t do and what I could. And that was the beauty of everything.”
Playing in Sm
ith’s system, Jordan had yet to discover anything close to the full range of his abilities.
Fourteen seconds after the block, Othell Wilson hit a three-pointer, and Virginia pulled within two with fifty seconds to play. But the Cavaliers were forced to foul, and Jordan and Jimmy Braddock made their free throws for a 101–95 win. Sampson left University Hall that day without speaking to reporters.
With the victory, Carolina moved to first place in the ACC. The Tar Heels then beat NC State and Duke by large margins. With Worthy gone to the NBA, Jordan began slipping down to the box, where he showed the first flashes of the post-up game that would be a staple of his professional play. He ran the floor well and often benefited from being the open man in Smith’s secondary break. Even when he wasn’t open, Jordan could produce a shot with his quick first step and elevation. He still drew occasional traveling calls for the move, but Smith had sent a slow-motion videotape of the first step to the NCAA to confirm that Jordan was not traveling. The Carolina offense also produced bunches of back cuts and backdoor plays that helped an athletic player like Jordan fill out the stat sheet.
“Jordan worked as hard as any player I’ve seen, especially an excellent player,” said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski after that January game. “He set the tone for the game. He was as tough mentally as I’ve ever seen him play. He said, ‘I want it, give it to me. I’m going to work.’ He was just excellent. We wanted to play defense on him. We diagrammed and said, ‘This is what he’s going to do.’ He still did it. I admire that. Even when he missed shots, he was working so hard to get them. He never gave us a chance to get back into it.”
Jordan’s run continued against Georgia Tech the next week when he made 11 of 16 shots on his way to his career high in college, 39 points. His totals included seven three-point attempts. He made six of them.
His efforts had impressed ESPN commentator and former coach Dick Vitale as Virginia came to Carmichael Auditorium. The winning streak had driven the Tar Heels to number one in the country, with Virginia number two in one poll. The Virginia sports information people were irritated by Vitale, whom they accused of conducting a one-man campaign against Sampson in the national Player of the Year balloting. Vitale had extolled the talents of Jordan, but Terry Holland and the Virginia PR staff felt that Vitale was not merely supporting Jordan, but had been snidely attacking Sampson.
Vitale used the word “superstar” with a tinge of derision regarding Sampson, they said. The broadcaster felt he was being misunderstood. He said that Sampson, unlike some other great centers, had played with inferior talent at Virginia. But Vitale remarked that at times during his final college season, Sampson had lacked enthusiasm while Jordan, on the other hand, oozed it.
Thirty years later, Holland observed, “There’s no argument that Michael was a legitimate candidate and that Dick had every right to vote for as well as promote whomever he wished to promote. But our objection was to his comments about why Michael should be the Player of the Year instead of Ralph. That was just Dick being Dick as he tends to get carried away. But there seemed little reason to criticize Ralph in order to promote his candidate.” Holland added that Sampson was already a two-time college Player of the Year who had stayed in school for four years.
The debate would be settled on Carmichael’s floor. The pregame noise from the packed student section was so deafening, Virginia’s players could barely hear their own names during the introductions. Nonetheless, they played brilliantly and had stacked up a 16-point lead with nine minutes left in the second half.
With 4:48 left, Virginia’s Jimmy Miller finished a three-point play, opening a 63–53 lead. The Cavaliers never scored again, but stumbled through a rash of turnovers and steals. At 1:20, with his team still leading 63–60, Sampson missed a foul shot. Then came the signature play, with 51 seconds on the clock, as Jordan stripped the ball from Rick Carlisle at midcourt, sped to the rim, and jammed in a 64–63 Carolina lead. Decades later, the play would still stir testimonials from those who watched it happen. Virginia then whittled down the last fifty seconds until Carlisle missed a long jumper with 0:05 remaining on the clock.
Jordan outjumped Sampson to claim the key final rebound, which was telling, Billy Packer recalled. “That particular year his highlights were not offensive. His highlights showed me, number one, his incredible competitive nature, but also his defensive skills. I learned more about him in ’83 in regard to how well he could guard somebody. Obviously he was a good scorer, too, but where he was phenomenal was defensively.”
Holland agreed. “Michael was a terrific all-around college player, but he was most effective defensively,” he recalled in 2012. “And that is a lot more difficult to prepare for than a great offensive player since you can’t double-cover a defender or devise ways to keep the ball out of his hands.”
The Carolina crowd stood and cheered long after the game was over. “We were back in the dorm later that night,” David Mann recalled, “and my voice was totally gone. I screamed my voice out, and I was downstairs at the snack machine and Michael comes down there. It’s just me and him, and I’m talking to him about how great the game was and how awesome he was. He was like matter-of-fact about it. ‘Yeah. Okay.’ And he started talking about class. He was totally nonchalant about the whole thing, like nothing had even happened. He wasn’t even interested in talking about the game.”
Three days later Villanova came to town for a rematch of the 1982 regional finals. Eddie Pinckney had remained in touch with Sam Perkins, fellow New Yorkers eager to get any inside info they could, it seems. Some of their talk focused on the growing competition between conferences. Villanova belonged to the Big East, which included Georgetown.
“We didn’t want to fraternize too much because they had the potential to embarrass you if you let them,” Pinckney recalled of the Tar Heels. “What Perkins would say is Jordan was the best player he’d ever seen. And, of course, I would say it was Ewing. For us, just going down there and getting a chance to play against Jordan and an ACC team that was ranked number one at the time is something you never forget, because the ACC ruled at the time. They were the premier conference and they had all the great players.
“They were ranked at the time as number one, and they had Jordan,” Pinckney explained. “We didn’t really think we could deal with him. You just knew this guy was a great player. You’re saying to yourself as a player, ‘I’ve seen this guy play before. When’s it going to happen?’ ’Cause you knew what’s coming. ‘When’s he going to take over the game?’ ”
It didn’t happen that day. Jordan didn’t play particularly well, and Villanova defeated the number one team in the country, in their own building. “They were supposed to just squash us, and we put up a pretty good fight,” Pinckney said. “We played out of our minds.”
The loss sent the Tar Heels into a spiral. They traveled to Maryland three days later and lost by 12, then lost again three days after that at NC State by 7 points, foreshadowing their loss to the Wolfpack later in the ACC tournament semifinals that year. Jim Valvano’s players had fallen into a rhythm that would carry them all the way to an improbable national championship against Houston.
The Heels, meanwhile, made their way to the NCAA regional final in Syracuse, where they were snuffed by Georgia, 82–77. Jordan broke loose for several flashy dunks but couldn’t deliver victory. Afterward, he told Roy Williams he was burned out and was going to take a break from basketball. The assistant understood the competitive burden that Jordan had assumed with Worthy’s departure. Smith’s system helped to ease the circumstances, but Jordan’s very best had been required each game for the Carolina basketball machine to keep rolling forward. Williams told Jordan that taking a break made sense, so he was understandably surprised the next day to find him back in the gym, working on his game. Asked about his change in plans, Jordan just said that he had to get better.
The Tar Heels had suffered a blow with the season’s end, but the Jordan reputation had climbed several levels. He was now s
een as “easily the best defensive guard in the land,” according to Sports Illustrated, this a mere year after striking the coaching staff as almost indifferent about defense as a freshman. “Jordan always seems to know where the ball is and where it’s going,” said Maryland forward Mark Fothergill. “He roams around like a madman, playing the whole court and causing all kinds of confusion.”
With the ACC’s three-point shot experiment, Jordan had raised his average to 20.0 points a game (good enough to lead the ACC), along with 5.5 rebounds. Still, he wasn’t pleased. He had shot 53.5 percent from the floor, but the outside shot, critical with Carolina facing so many zones, wasn’t as strong as it was during his freshman campaign. “I think the three-pointer altered my thinking,” he decided. “I was pressing, trying to hit too many long ones.” Actually, he had hit an impressive 44.7 percent on three-point shots, good enough to rank him fourth among Carolina’s guards. “Plus, my arc got higher and higher,” he said. “I think the winning shot in ’82 went to my head or something. I must have watched it on film thirty times. That thing was a rainbow. Wow.”
As a freshman, he had never won the defensive award selected by the Carolina coaches after each game, but he won it thirteen times as a sophomore. He had slipped into the passing lanes for deflections and used his long arms for back-tips, recording 78 steals on the season, just shy of Dudley Bradley’s Carolina record. The defensive activity meant that he racked up 110 personal fouls, fouling out of four games, all of which the Tar Heels lost.
Beyond the stats, there had been several startling displays. He had, in one instance, jumped over the head of NC State guard Sidney Lowe. And Sports Illustrated had named one of his slams against Georgia Tech a “demoralizer dunk.” He had left the ground at the foul line, displayed a disconcerting hang time, then redirected his slam to the side of the goal at the last moment. “I thought I was watching Superman,” Georgia Tech’s Tim Harvey exclaimed afterward.
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