Michael Jordan and Me

Benjamin Markovits

I grew up in Texas with two obsessions: basketball and Romantic verse. Satisfaction of both lay readily at hand. We had a hoop out back overlooked by the kitchen of a curry-house which sent its smell of spice and soapy water across the court. (Another neighbour once took a shotgun to the lights when I had stayed out late, banging the ball on the cement; I came back the next night and played in the dark.) Around the corner stood Half Price Books, which in my childhood lived up to its name. Both obsessions had their heroes: Byron among the Romantics – principally, I think, for his rudeness, but partly because he captured the essence of my other, still breathing hero, Michael Jordan. ‘Half dust, half deity’, Byron wrote of man’s estate, but I applied his meaning more specifically. ‘Alike unfit to sink or soar’ seemed to describe that hanging space, a few feet off the ground, in which Jordan lived.

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Vol. 24 No. 10 · 23 May 2002 » Benjamin Markovits » Michael Jordan and Me (print version)
pages 32-33 | 4618 words

Letters

From Mary Ann Harrell

Two corrections of detail to 6'6" Benjamin Markovits's basketball Diary (LRB, 23 May). First, Michael Jordan's alma mater is the University of North Carolina. (There is no entity with the title 'State University of North Carolina'.) UNC, as its devotees and headline writers call it, was authorised by the state constitution of 1776 and chartered by the General Assembly on 11 December 1789. As of 15 January 1795 it became the first state university to open its doors to students. (The University of Georgia was chartered earlier but opened later.)

Second, Michael Jordan was not a 'country kid'. He grew up in the coastal city of Wilmington. Even the smaller city programmes usually offer better facilities, coaching, competition and publicity than rural schools can manage. These points aside, Markovits has written a splendid piece. I was startled but delighted to find it in your pages.

Mary Ann Harrell
Bethesda, Maryland

From Philip Stine

Michael Jordan played his high-school basketball at Laney High School here in Wilmington. His coach initially told him he was too small to play basketball.

Philip Stine
Wilmington, North Carolina

Editor, ‘London Review’ writes: The errant appearance of the State University of North Carolina, pointed out by several letter writers, wasn't the fault of Benjamin Markovits, but of the editors, who got carried away with their capitalisations on Friday afternoon. Now we even know that the team is called the Tar Heels.