BJ Armstrong on dinner he had with Michael Jordan - Kobe Bryant
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Northside Hawk
Well-Known Member
Now he was known for a strong finishing kick...
When he set a world record for the mile in 1966, he turned a final lap in 53.5 seconds.
Half milers dont turn laps that quick. His lungs had to be on fire!
WinOneThisCentury
Well-Known Member
I had forgotten about BJ's game when he came back to Chicago as a Charlotte Hornet and he played a huge role in the Hornet's upsetting the Bulls. The documentary was great...showing Jordan shaking his head at BJ taunting the Bull's bench. Big mistake.
The thing about Jordan that has become so clear though The Last Dance is that everything was personal when it came to motivating himself. Here is a guy that would get jacked up to make BJ Armstrong pay for showing them up...and it's a guy that could turn up his game, not only offensively...but defensively at a level that few have ever played. If he was motivated to do so...he could shut you out...zero points. It wasn't just about winning a game or a series...it was about humiliating or putting a player or team in their place.
The thing about Jordan that has become so clear though The Last Dance is that everything was personal when it came to motivating himself. Here is a guy that would get jacked up to make BJ Armstrong pay for showing them up...and it's a guy that could turn up his game, not only offensively...but defensively at a level that few have ever played. If he was motivated to do so...he could shut you out...zero points. It wasn't just about winning a game or a series...it was about humiliating or putting a player or team in their place.
BJ at that point was a shell of himself. He'd had a nasty knee injury and hadn't played much that whole season. Didn't even play much that first half of that game. They put him in and he just got hot for a half. Kinda caught magic in a bottle and it was what it was. Look at the box score he only had like 10-12 pts I think. BJ reacted like anybody else in that situation would have. The Hornets were such under dogs going into that series. Winning that one game was pretty unlikely. Winning the series wasn't going to happen no matter what...
Northside Hawk
Well-Known Member
He was tripped in a qualifying race at the 1972 Olympics, one of about 2,168 things that went wrong for the USA in those games.
You had the basketball controversy, two sprinters DQ'd because their coach didn't give them the correct starting time, Pre gets passed up for the bronze in the final twenty meters in the 5k, Frank Shorter doesn't get to bask in the applause during the final stretch of his marathon victory because an imposter snuck into the tunnel and emerged before Shorter for the final stretch.
Even Mark Spitz, one of the few Americans who did have a spectacular games, faced a whole different kind of pressure being Jewish in the wake of the kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes. One American who did have a great Olympics was of course Dan Gable. (his legendary 375 lb ISU superheavyweight teammate Chris Taylor settled for a bronze and died before he was thirty)
Side note on the terrorist attack. Some of you may have heard of Shep Messing, of soccer goalie fame from when Pele briefly popularized pro soccer in America, and from the Skoal tobacco commercials. Shep was Jewish, and was only a few doors down from where the doomed athletes were staying. His roomates helped his escape his room through the window.
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