Michael’s Moment | 1982: North Carolina 63, Georgetown 62
This was the title affair that featured all that iron. There was James Worthy and Sam Perkins and Dean Smith on the one side, and there was Patrick Ewing and Sleepy Floyd and John Thompson on the other.
And, of course, there was Michael Jordan, a skinny freshman guard who’d end up hovering over the whole bunch — then, later and likely forever — by splashing a 16-foot jumper with some 15 seconds remaining on the clock that won for North Carolina a championship and launched for American sports fans a golden era.
“That wasn’t the start of something wonderful for me because that shot beat us,” said Thompson, who directed Georgetown on the night of Jordan’s ascension and now dabbles in radio and TV in his coaching retirement. “Michael showed that he had the guts to take that kind of shot and the ability to make it. There were a lot of guys on both teams who were capable of making the big play — Worthy, Perkins, Patrick, Sleepy. But the fact remains that it was Michael who made it.”
By doing so, Jordan, who’d finish with 16 points, turned a 62-61 North Carolina deficit into, ultimately, a 63-62 victory for the Tar Heels and decided a stunning contest during which every dribble seemed to be challenged, every rebound became a rush for gold and every basket was nothing less than treasure.
“When you reflect on that game, you see there really was an impressive group of people in it,” said Thompson, whose star, Ewing, was called for five goal-tending violations. “There was high quality on that court and things were extraordinarily competitive. Sometimes, comparisons are odious, but you’d have to say in its era that game was as good as any that had been played.”
More than just that — and despite the fact that Worthy was the evening’s leading scorer with 28 points — that game pretty much introduced the fellow who’d become, in the opinion of so many, the greatest player basketball has yet seen.
“I was at the foul line on that play,” Doherty said. “If it was hockey, I would have gotten an assist because I threw the ball to Jimmy Black, who then threw it to Michael. To this day, still, that shot blows my mind.
“He was a freshman, remember, in a time when freshmen were freshmen. It’s not like now where it’s understood that freshmen come in, stick around for a year and then leave for the NBA. Michael was a real freshman and he caught that pass, with 60,000 in the seats, so relaxed that it seemed like he was shooting in the gym all by himself. And that thing went right through the heart of the net.
“The poise. The confidence. Michael Jordan went on to do that how many more times?”
A whole lot. But he first did it in the Superdome.
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