NASCAR’s regular-season champ channels his boss — Michael Jordan — to save his season

Michael Jordan carefully climbed down from his pit box and rumbled through a bustling pit lane — one replete with cameras and bent bumpers and delirium.

He had someone he needed to see.

Someone who, at least on this day at Charlotte Motor Speedway, did something that resembled Jordan himself. Someone who won the NASCAR Cup Series regular season championship but whose season, an hour prior to the end of this playoff race, looked all but lost. Someone who fought off fate by virtue of the kind of clutch performance His Airness is immortalized for — a 30-something-lap stretch that saw the driver go from 12 points below the cut-line and out of the playoffs to two points above it and into the Round of 8.

Jordan needed to see Tyler Reddick.

“What a grind,” Jordan said when asked by a reporter on his way to Reddick, who drives for 23XI Racing, the race team co-owned by Jordan.

Then the six-time NBA champion whose impact on sports borders on mythology shook his head and smiled. He’d felt such a feeling before.

This scene after the NASCAR Cup Series playoff elimination race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord might not be remembered by the history books. Kyle Larson, the series’ wins leader and poster child, won without much of a sweat. The drivers who entered the day above the cut-line advanced to the next round of the playoffs (save for a late post-race swap with Alex Bowman and Joey Logano after Bowman was disqualified for failing NASCAR’s post-race weight requirements). No fists were thrown. No tempers rattled. No photo finish that sent social media into a frenzy — a staple in today’s world of Cup racing.

But what Sunday saw was something that a great like Jordan could recognize without needing a second look. And that was this: Reddick staring down the barrel of catastrophe — no NASCAR regular-season champ hadn’t made the Round of 8, after all — and climbing his way out, lap by lap, turn by turn, pass by pass.

Reddick found himself in near-last place late after getting collected in a Stage 2 wreck — 12 points below the playoff cut-line, needing approximately 15 spots to have a chance. Then, late in Stage 3 after patching up the car and his confidence, Reddick furrowed his way to 11th, barely edging Joey Logano in points, to keep his season alive.

The run started with a pit stop late in Stage 3 where crew chief Billy Scott made a few adjustments that turned the car into the dynamo it was in Stage 1, Reddick said post-race. Then Reddick, one of the best road-course racers on the circuit, took over from there.

When asked if he thought he could pull off such an upset, Reddick said: “Before that pit stop? I was a bit unsure.”

“At one point, we passed enough cars and had plenty of time to get the last couple,” Reddick said. “And then the 22 (Logano) started losing some spots. So it was coming to us there. But there was a moment when there was a bunch of us stacked together, and I was like, ‘Alright, if I’m efficient here, I can get them all pretty quickly and maybe run down the next group.’ It didn’t quite go perfectly.

“But we made passes. We avoided calamity and got through it.”

There were several moments on-track that culminated in this signature feat. There was the Stage 1 win that he captured without much fuss and that proved vital to the math in the end. There was the tear he went on from Laps 80 to 95 that helped him rise into the Top 20, passing a bunch of guys, including playoff driver Alex Bowman. Bowman was like many of the drivers Sunday — he wasn’t able to put up much of a fight against a determined Reddick with an improved car.

And then the nail in the coffin: when Reddick passed Denny Hamlin — who co-owns 23XI Racing with Jordan — with 10 laps to go. The pass came on that pesky hairpin Turn 7 to seal his spot in the Round of 8 barring a disastrous finish that never came.

Hamlin marched up to Reddick after the race too with a smile and a message of his own, referencing how close Reddick was to sending him and Hamlin spinning out of control on Reddick’s important pass: “You about got both of us!”

Hamlin added: “But after that, I told him I was really proud of his drive. As hard as it is to pass, generally speaking on road course races, surely his car’s not optimal (after the wreck), for him to be able to drive back to the front like that is pretty impressive.”

Hamlin wasn’t the only one to give Reddick a bear hug on pit lane. Jordan did, too. So did his crew chief and pit crew guys, all of whom received high-fives from Jordan on his way to see the driver of the 45 car. Even Reddick’s 23XI Racing teammate, Bubba Wallace, stopped by and hugged him and smacked the back of his neck: “Hey, you made it out.”

Then Reddick, before being whisked away to an NBC interview, was asked on pit lane what Jordan’s impact meant on such a moment. If he’d channeled his boss in any way.

Reddick smiled and shrugged.

“I just gotta do the same stuff,” Reddick said, referencing Jordan’s late-game heroism. He then chuckled. “Well, try my best anyway.”

It was as if he was saying: Don’t worry, I know I’m nothing like prime Jordan.

No one is. No one ever has been.

But, for a moment, Reddick could’ve fooled a bunch of people at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Sunday.

Maybe even Jordan himself.