Conversation with Michael Jordan

This pice is for an audience of all ages. Its purpose is to show describe a conversation between two people.

E: Tell me about one of your most memorable moments in your unbelievable basketball career.

JORDAN: I think it would be when we won our first title about twenty years ago.

E: When did you realize that the N.B.A. title was within your grasp?

JORDAN: In the first game against the Lakers. They played their asses off, we played terrible, but we still had a chance to win down the stretch. That's all we needed from that point on. That gave us our confidence. It was a moral victory for us in the first game. Then in the second game, we went right back and pounded them. Gave us that confidence back that we lost.

E: Most people looked at it from the standpoint that the Lakers got a game in Chicago.

JORDAN: Yeah, but the momentum changed. It's not like it just changed hands, we grabbed it.

E: What were the emotions like before game five against the Lakers?

JORDAN: We were just determined.

E: Were you scared?

JORDAN: Nope, I wasn't scared. We had three chances to win one, right? I wasn't nervous. We went in there relaxed.

E: When did it hit you that the championship was yours?

JORDAN: When [guard] John Paxson started knocking down shots. He was measuring them, boom, he was just knocking them down. I missed some of the excitement by not doing it in Chicago. If we had done it in Chicago, we probably wouldn't have lived, because the fans would have killed us. But it was nearly as bad in L.A.

E: What happened in the locker room after the final game? It looked like you were overwhelmed with emotion.

JORDAN: I tried to fight it, but I couldn't. I suppressed a lot of disappointment over the years. When we won it all, I became more emotional than I have ever been. I don't regret it. It was something I had to let out.

E: Is there going to be any challenge to the Olympics?

JORDAN: You know, it's one of those situations where the challenge is going to be playing together as a team. When you look at the talent and the teams we're supposed to play against, it's a massacre. It should never be close. We taught them the game of basketball. We've got people who have the ability and the height. We're talking about the greatest players that play the game now and the team is the best team that's ever been put together. Who's going to beat us? The Japanese? The Chinese? They can't match up to the athleticism we're going to have on this team. Not to mention the mental advantage we're going to have here with Magic, or whoever's gonna play the point. You have Stockton, Barkley, me, Robinson, Bird . . . come on. These are the people that the Europeans look up to, so how can they beat us? If any game is even close, it will be a moral victory for Europe.