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Frank Kaminsky on a proposed one-on-one game with Michael Jordan: 'I think he could beat me'
Michael Jordan hasn’t played an NBA game in 12½ years. He was a borderline All-Star then, voted into the All-Star Game by fans, an oft-injured mid-range jump shooter that still managed to put up a more-than-respectable 20 points per game on 44 percent shooting at age 40.
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Jordan is 52 now, and he owns the Charlotte Hornets franchise. Earlier in 2015 he drafted Wisconsin senior Frank Kaminsky with the ninth pick in the NBA draft, hoping the athletic forward could serve as a missing piece on a Charlotte team that failed to make the playoffs in 2014-15. Kaminsky hasn’t excelled thus far, dropping in and out of the rotation as Charlotte attempts to make it back in the postseason bracket.
Perhaps this is why Frank is doubting his abilities to beat a man 30 years his senior at a one-on-one game of basketball. From the Dan Patrick Show, via Pro Basketball Talk:
Patrick: “You think you could take him one-on-one?”
Kaminsky: “No. I wouldn’t want to try.”
Patrick: “You don’t want to beat one of your heroes. Is that what you’re saying?”
Kaminsky: “No. I’m actually saying the opposite. I don’t want to lose.”
Patrick: “Now, he thinks he could beat you.”
Kaminsky: “I think he could beat me, too.”
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We should remind that Michael Jordan thinks he can beat any random Hornet as well. From a talk with L’Equipe, two weeks before he drafted Kaminsky, as transcribed by Ananth Pandian at CBS Sports:
L'Equipe: Do you think you can play against some of your guys right now? Do you sometimes do that or not? Could you win on one-on-ones against them?
Jordan: I'm pretty sure I can, so I don't want to do that and demolish their confidence. So I stay away from them, I let them think they're good...but I'm too old to do that anyway.
“I’m too old, but I could totally do it, but I shouldn’t do it because I don’t want to wreck their confidence … but I could totally do it.” Michael Jordan is telling a bunch of twenty-somethings that his tires are shot before they race, it’s all about your confidence, guys and he doesn’t want to ruin that … but he’d still take a game to 21, win by two.
Jordan has gone through this before, of course. Not just the badgering about all the guys he could dominate on the block, but the questions about whether he could topple the kids who actually play for the teams he’s created.
In Kwame Brown’s lone tryout for the Washington Wizards in 2001, he dominated would-be top overall draft pick Tyson Chandler, and punctuated the audition by telling Jordan (who hadn’t played an NBA game for three years at the time) that he could also take him one on one. Jordan, smitten as Wizards president by Brown’s gifts and chutzpah, selected Kwame first overall in that year’s draft. In Brown’s introductory press conference, he again relayed his desire to beat his boss in a game, to which Jordan replied, “That is a dream.”
MJ spent the next 2½ months mid-life crisis-ing his way back into an NBA comeback, hiring Doug Collins as coach and attempting a win-now shot at a playoff berth in spite of the fact he had just drafted a 19-year-old who didn’t know how to tie a necktie at the time. Jordan humiliated Kwame Brown in practices, if not with one-on-one battles but with horrific verbal abuse, and partially as a result Brown never fully followed through on maximizing his significant NBA potential.
(Frank Kaminsky was all of 8 years old during that summer, which is borderline boggling when you consider he spent four years at Wisconsin and was put through the ringer of various NCAA tournaments. He’s still probably heard the tale of Kwame Brown’s Washington Life of Woe.)
The worry with Kaminsky was not his skill set – he has an NBA game – but the idea that at age 22 his potential was limited in comparison to other, younger, NBA draft lottery talents. The Hornets reportedly turned down a ridiculous (for both sides, if we’re honest) package of four first-round draft picks (including a future unprotected pick from Brooklyn, a team that will forever be terrible) from Boston in order to stick with the big forward, as the Celtics chased down 19-year-old Justice Winslow.
Winslow isn’t a star just yet, but Kaminsky is still a step or four behind the Miami Heat swingman. Frank is shooting 38 percent from the field and 32 percent from behind the arc, and Stephen Curry has a better rebounding rate than the 7-foot rookie. It’s early, of course, and the Hornets have carved out wins in half of their 12 contests, but this is not an ideal start.
Maybe Kaminsky should take on Jordan. MJ would no doubt be in favor, just as long as a week’s pay was on the line, and it could encourage a Reverse Kwame Effect. Anything to shut the old man up.
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is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
