For a couple of years now, I’ve been hearing the following words as encouragement: “You don’t start out good at everything. Michael Jordan didn’t even make the varsity basketball team his first year in high school.”
I’ve spent thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars researching that fact, and what I’ve uncovered is shocking: Michael Jordan is a vindictive son of a bitch.
It’s true that Jordan did not make the cut as a sophomore. Jordan attended Wilmington’s Laney High School, where at first he failed to make the varsity basketball team. Instead, Laney’s basketball coach, Clifton “Pop” Herring, decided that Michael Jordan could improve his skills with more playing time on the junior varsity team. Then 5 ft 11 in tall, Jordan averaged 25 points per game with the JV team. Though Jordan now claims that being cut wasn’t a bad thing, and that it spurred him on to work harder, the awful truth is that Jordan immediately pledged that he would avenge the humiliation of being assigned to the JV squad, writing in a journal that the varsity team and coaches would “pay” for his humiliation.
Figure 1– Jordan’s 10th grade journal
As he became hugely successful at UNC and later in the NBA, winning six titles with the Chicago Bulls, Jordan never forgot his vow. Tracing the fates of the players and coaches of that year’s varsity squad at Laney reveals that Jordan has meticulously and ruthlessly punished each and every one of them in some way over the years.
Here’s what became of the team that Michael Jordan couldn’t make:
Starting point guard Jeremy Burris was considered the best player at Laney in his senior year, and was recruited by several colleges, including UNLV and Arkansas A&M. He averaged 3.2 ppg in his college career, which was cut short when he injured his knee in a 1982 pickup game that Jordan reputedly attended. Burris worked as a sales representative for the Washington Wizards until Jordan bought an interest in the team and fired his whole department, claiming sluggish sales and a lack of motivation. A year later, Jordan donned a Wizards uniform and the Wiz immediately sold out every home game for the rest of the season.
Shooting guard Patrick Lake attended UNC-CH and majored in Geography. He graduated and got a job with the North Carolina DOT as a surveyor, making $22,500 yearly. Citing feelings of worthlessness, he committed suicide when he saw that Geography majors had the highest average income of all UNC-CH majors, at roughly $700,000 a year. That figure may be misleading: Jordan is the most visible graduate of the Geography department.
Brandon Chenowith was Laney’s top rebounder as a small forward. He now lives in Chapel Hill, where he was a waiter at Jordan’s restaurant, 23, until the business failed.
Power forward Kirk Hamrick has gone through six brutal divorces. In each, Hamrick’s grounds for divorce were “she kept calling me Michael when we was in the bedroom. I don’t know no Michael.” Inez Rodriguez Hamrick later revealed that she had been paid a hefty sum to marry and divorce Hamrick by a shadowy figure who “always sat in a leather office chair with his back to me, smoking.”
6′8″ center Kelvin Wright attempted to impress his then-girlfriend Sherry by dunking basketballs in the school gymnasium. Jordan leapfrogged him for an even-more-impressive dunk, causing Wright permanent spinal damage. He now sells Tyson Chandler t-shirts from a wheelchair outside the United Center in Chicago, IL.
Sixth man DaJuan Harper, whose trademark was sticking out his tongue while shooting free throws, entered the military after graduation. While serving in the Persian Gulf in 1990, he told platoon-mates that he had originated the tongue-out style that Jordan made famous. Harper was later left behind by his platoon and captured in Kuwait, where Iraqi forces cut out his tongue before releasing him. His captain at the time was Noel “Fluffy” Cartwright, a distant cousin of Bulls center Bill Cartwright.
Reserve guards Eddie and Joe McGillicutty went into film after graduating from UCLA. They served as gaffer and best boy, respectively, on the Lil Bow Wow film “Like Mike.” They later sued Bow Wow and the film’s producers for repeated harassment and threatening phone calls, claiming that the diminutive star would call at all hours of the night asking “who is most like Mike, you bitches?” The two still live together in Los Angeles but have been unable to find work since the lawsuit.
Lil Bow Wow: “Who’s like Mike now?”
Reserve forward Jerry Carton’s heart was never in basketball; he was a baseball player. Drafted by the Texas Rangers in the 87th round of the 1979 amateur draft, Carton was 102-121 in 19 minor-league seasons. In 1994, while playing for the Knoxville Smokies, Carton received word that a callup was imminent. Scheduled to pitch that night against the Birmingham Barons, he gave up 31 runs, including a home run and a two-run double to Michael Jordan. He was never called up to the major leagues.
Assistant coach Fred Lynch is now the head coach at Laney. “Michael told me talk to [then head coach Clifton "Pop"] Herring, get him to change his mind,” says Lynch. “You know, let Michael on varsity. I told him no, and he said to me, ‘This is your last chance. When I am famous as the best basketball player in the world and fabulously wealthy from a lucrative contract with the Chicago Bulls, as well as numerous endorsements, I will pay you handsomely for the opportunity. Defy me, and you will spend the rest of your days in this shithole high school.’ I’m still here.”
Coach Clifton “Pop” Herring disappeared in 1997. While the police investigation ended with no suspects, Herring’s wife Matilda claims Herring was abducted by the Monstarrs and/or New Jersey Nets center Shawn Bradley, all of whom co-starred with Jordan in “Space Jam.” “I’m pretty sure he was eaten,” says Mrs. Herring. “Our dog Pepper found the largest bones in the back yard a few months later, and I just cried and cried. I don’t think Michael would get his hands dirty getting revenge on my poor, sweet Pop, but I bet he put that nasty Shawn Bradley and the Monstarrs up to it.”
Bradley could not be reached for comment, but he has known ties to Mafia-owned steakhouses.
While Jordan denies seeking revenge and claims that the journal entry is an “obvious fake,” his image has been tarnished in recent years by a failed comeback, gambling debt, and the sacrifice of three of Craig Ehlo’s infant children to the devil. Jordan lives in Chicago, and is preparing for a career in the NHL.
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