Michael Jordan Once Admitted to Not Being Good Enough Until a Freak Occurrence in High School: ?I Really Didn?t Develop My Abilities?

It is common knowledge that the average height required to be a professional basketball player is over six feet. There have been NBA players who were under six feet tall, but they had to perform extraordinarily well to be selected into the league. Nevertheless, height is considered an important factor when it comes to playing basketball. There have been several players who were too short to even consider playing on the professional stage. However, many players, fortunately, experienced sudden growth spurts which resulted in vast differences in their height.

Los Angeles Lakers player Russell Westbrook was just five-feet-eight-inches when he started high school. He couldn’t even make the varsity team until he was a junior and even then he found it difficult to dunk. In the following summer, he grew up to to six-feet-three-inches that helped him during his games in the senior year. Former Chicago Bulls star Scottie Pippen had somewhat of a similar story.

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By the time he had finished high school, Pippen was only six-feet-one-inch, which wasn’t really helpful. He too, had experienced a sudden increase in height during his college years, growing up to six-foot-eight-inch. It will probably come as a surprise that one of the greatest players in the history of NBA also had issues with height when he was in high school.

Michael Jordan used to struggle with his height

In a 1984 interview with Roy Firestone, it was revealed that the Chicago Bulls star was not really that tall while he was in high school. Firestone stated that NBA legend Michael Jordan couldn’t make his high school basketball team because he wasn’t tall enough at the time. He further added that in just a span of one year, MJ had grown from six-feet-one to six-feet-five.

“Well I didn’t make the varsity and that was a big thing in high school and I wasn’t that good. I was at height to six-one and I really didn’t develop my abilities until after I grew,” said Jordan.

Jokingly, Firestone asked what he was eating at the time that he grew four inches in such a short span. His Airness replied that he didn’t know what he was eating but he was glad that it helped him grow.

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Do you think MJ would have been able to make the league with just his skills if he hadn’t had that growth spurt? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!