The God in Youth: Michael Jordan 球神的少年时代：迈克尔·乔丹（在线收听）

[00:01.69]The God in Youth: Michael Jordan 球神的少年时代：迈克尔·乔丹

[00:05.51]The summer after ninth grade,

[00:08.68]Michael Jordan and Smith both went to Pop Herring’s basketball camp.

[00:13.73]In Smith’s mind there was no doubt which of the two of them was the better player

[00:18.52]—it was Michael by far. But on the day the varsity cuts were announced,

[00:23.36]Smith’s name was on it, Michael’s was not.

[00:26.51]It was the worst day of Jordan’s young life.

[00:29.45]That day he went home by himself and went to his room and cried.

[00:33.63]Smith understood what was happening

[00:35.48]—Michael, he knew, never wanted you to see him when he was hurt.

[00:39.63]“We knew Michael was good,” Fred Lynch, the Laney assistant coach, said later,

[00:44.47]“but we wanted him to play more and we thought the jayvee was better for him.”

[00:49.36]He easily became the best player on the jayvee that year.

[00:52.99]He simply dominated the play, and he did it not by size but with quickness.

[00:57.91]There were games in which he would score forty points.

[01:00.74]He was so good, in fact, that the jayvee games became quite popular.

[01:05.34]The entire varsity began to come early so they could watch him play.

[01:09.40]Smith noticed that after the cut Jordan seemed even more competitive than ever,

[01:14.32]as if determined that it would never happen again.

[01:17.26]His coaches noticed it, too.

[01:19.68]“The first time I ever saw him, I had no idea who Michael Jordan was,” said Ron Coley.

[01:25.26]“We went over to Goldsboro, which was our big rival,

[01:29.19]and I entered the gym when the jayvee game was just ending up.

[01:32.46]There were nine players on the court just coasting,

[01:35.32]but there was one kid playing his heart out.

[01:37.72]The way he was playing

[01:38.71]I thought his team was down one point with two minutes to play.

[01:42.41]So I looked up at the clock

[01:44.29]and his team was down twenty points and there was only one minute to play.

[01:48.77]It was Michael, and I quickly learned he was always like that.”

[01:52.81]Between the time he was cut and the start of basketball in his junior year,

[01:56.85]Jordan was as driven as ever, the hardest-working player on the team in practice.

[02:01.87]If he thought that his teammates were not working hard enough,

[02:05.51]he would get on them himself, and on occasion he pushed the coaches to get on them.

[02:10.54]Suddenly Laney High School had the beginning of a very good basketball team,

[02:15.35]and its rising star was Michael Jordan.