Michael Jordan is very competitive, and his sons have seen it first-hand. Marcus and Jeffrey Jordan recently shared a story on the Breakfast Club radio show about how competitive their father can be. Marcus revealed that when they were little, Jordan tackled Jeffrey into a glass table while playing football in the family’s home.
“When we was little, we would play football on our knees, like tackle football on our knees with my dad, right?” Marcus said, as transcribed by PEOPLE. “And so there was this one time where we were playing in their room and they had these round like end tables at the end of their bed. And so Jeff was going for a touchdown — and I’ll never forget it — my dad tackled Jeff into the glass table.” Marcus continued to say that Jeffrey crashed head-first into the table, which required 30 stitches. “I thought he was dead,” Marcus said continued. “I mean, you could literally see the meat and skull. Me and Jasmine were terrified, we were crying.”
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Jeffrey added that it was nothing to worry about in the long run because he could be their father when that time was needed. “He definitely could turn that off and be dad. Take us to school, you know, make sure we got our work done and everything we needed to do,” he said. “But when it was on, it was on. It was competition.”
Fans have gotten a glimpse of how competitive Jordan can get in the ESPN docuseries, The Last Dance. In the episodes that aired on Sunday, Jordan revealed he was hard on his teammates because he wanted to win. Each of Jordan’s teammates featured on The Last Dance agreed that Jordan was tough to deal with on the practice court. However, they knew he was doing it because he wanted everyone to be their best.
“You ask all my teammates,” Jordan said, “The one thing about Michael Jordan was he never asked me to do something that he didn’t f—ing do. When people see this, they are going say, ‘Well, he wasn’t really a nice guy. He may have been a tyrant.’ No, well, that’s you. Because you never wanted anything. I wanted to win, but I wanted them to win to be a part of that as well. Look, I don’t have to do this. I’m only doing it because it is who I am. That’s how I played the game. That was my mentality. If you don’t want to play that way, don’t play that way.”
