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Featured Image Credit: Getty Images
Topics: NBA, Basketball, Michael Jordan, Chicago Bulls
Ryan Baldi
Michael Jordan is not only the greatest basketball player of all time, he is also one of the most fiercely competitive stars ever seen in any sport.
That's why it is especially surprising that he once lost a one-v-one game against a 45-year-old financial executive.
In 13 seasons in the NBA, Jordan won six championships, five Most Valuable Player awards, six Finals MVPs and a record 10 scoring titles.
The most feared scorer the game has ever seen, Jordan was also an outstanding defender, having once won the Defensive Player of the Year award as well as being named on the All-Defensive First Team nine times.
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With his 6ft 6ins frame, outrageous athleticism and pinpoint mid-range shooting, Jordan was the perfect one-v-one player.
Yet – bizarrely – Jordan proved no match for millionaire CEO John Rogers when the two faced off in 2003.
Rodgers was a participant at a basketball camp Jordan was running shortly after he retired from the NBA following two final seasons with the Washington Wizards.
Entry to the camp cost $15,000 and attendees came with a wide range of basketball ability and experience.
Rogers had played college basketball at Princeton, but he'd only featured in four official games. Aged 45 at the time, he was five years Jordan's senior and – and video of the event captures – he was significantly shorter than the NBA GOAT.
During the session, Jordan invited participants to take him on in a one-v-one game, with the winner the first to score three baskets.
The hyper-competitive superstar was not taking it easy on his customers, mercilessly dispatching one after another.
But when Rogers was called up, he took Jordan by surprise by scoring two quick lay-ups.
The Chicago Bulls legend fired back with two baskets of his own.
A Jordan victory looked inevitable from that point, but the famous No.23 missed his next shot. The pair then exchanged misses before – after complaining of a sore knee – Rogers surprised Jordan by racing to the hoop and banking in the game-winning score. Jordan could be heard saying "oh no!" as the ball bounced in off the backboard.
“Playing Jordan is right up there," Rogers later told Andscape.
“But had I never made the basketball team at Princeton, I never would have had a chance to play for Coach Carril and none of what followed — the three-on-three tournaments, the Jordan camp, the friendships I made through basketball — would have ever happened."