Michael Jordan already won over Bobby Knight, who was starting to confide that Jordan was the best player he’d ever seen. But minutes before the gold-medal game at the 1984 Olympics, where Knight was the head coach and Jordan the star of stars, the player did something else to impress the General.
As recounted in Knight’s autobiography and “Playing for Keeps,” David Halberstam‘s book on Jordan: Knight was preparing the pre-game points to make to the team. He found a note smack in the middle of the locker-room blackboard. It was a yellow piece of paper from a legal pad.