If Michael Jordan asks you to play H.O.R.S.E, don’t. Unless you want to be able to tell people that you were destroyed in a game of H.O.R.S.E. by His Airness.
Ten years ago, we were in the middle of launching Worldcom (this was before the eventual corporate meltdown of that company). They had never advertised before and we won the assignment to launch them with Michael Jordan. Bob Giraldi directed the commercials and Walter Ioos Jr. shot the print photographs (one of our shots was on the cover of Time).
We worked with the greatest basketball legend to ever play the game for five days and Michael was amazingly down to earth and genuine. The experience was top of the world fun until one day at the Berto Center, Michael said, “Wanna play some H.O.R.S.E.?” Stupidly, I said yes.
Embarrassing is not a good description of what he did to me. Humiliation is a better fit. I can’t relive the details here. Just too painful. I was schooled. Not that I had never played ball before. I have – a lot. But I had played against humans. About halfway through the massacre, it hit me that I was one-on-one with Michael Jordan. Is this how every other NBA player felt as they watched him drain shot after shot?
I was not playing H.O.R.S.E. Playing is where one competitor goes against another adversary. This was like when the lion snags the wounded antelope from the edge of the herd and kills it with one sweatless, back-breaking paw swipe. I was the antelope.
(Once I shot with several Dallas Cowboys back in the day when Randy White roamed Texas Stadium. I was smart enough not to say, “Hey, let’s play seven-on-seven!”)
As I sweated and slung bricks, I started to laugh. It was ridiculous. He was laughing by now, too. He actually made me feel good as he beat me to death. That must be how he became so great. Even when you lost to him, you felt good. Kind of sick, isn’t it?
It gave my kids something to brag about at school. “Hey, I bet your dad couldn’t get his clock cleaned by Michael Jordan like my dad did.” Even more sadly, a friend videotaped it so I can look at it when I am old and say to my friends at the nursing home, “Hey you old punks, you wanna play dominoes with the guy who got hammered by Michael Jordan?”
