NBA icon Michael Jordan was issued a major challenge by Chris Paul in a room full of kids and the Chicago Bulls legend prevented the youngsters from getting free shoes.
During the Flight School camp in 2016, Paul challenged Jordan to a shooting drill. If Jordan missed three shots, all the campers received free Air Jordans.
Jordan made every shot during the challenge, much to the chagrin of the campers. Even though Jordan presumably loved all the kids at his camp, he likely wasn’t ready to give a ton of Air Jordans away for free and lose profit.
While he played for the Bulls and Washington Wizards, Jordan was one of the best — if not the best — mid-range shooters in the NBA. The 10-time scoring champion did most of his damage on two-pointers, hitting 11,611 two-pointers during his Hall of Famer career compared to only 581 3-pointers.
Despite being 53 years old during the 2016 Flight School, Jordan showed Paul and his campers he still possessed his electric shooting touch. Jordan’s jumper not only helped him win six championships and six Finals MVPs with the Bulls, but it also aided him in becoming the NBA’s all-time leader in points per game.
Jordan began to rely on his elite footwork and shooting touch heavily during the Bulls’ second three-peat since he was older and wiser. Instead of driving to the hoop and dunking on everyone, the five-time MVP took more mid-range jump shots and hit them at an incredibly high rate.
From 1996-97 to 1997-98, Jordan shot 49.0% on shots 16 feet from the basket to the 3-point line. He won three consecutive scoring titles in 1996, 1997 and 1998 thanks to his deadly jumper while leading the Bulls to three straight championships.
Jordan is the NBA’s all-time leader in points per game at 30.1. He likely wouldn’t hold that record if he hadn’t perfected the art of the mid-range jump shot. Defenders could not stop Jordan from getting to his spot on the floor and rising up for a jumper. All they could do was contest the shot and hope he missed.
Despite analytics telling players to shoot more 3-pointers than two-pointers, several recent NBA players have mastered the mid-range shot as Jordan did, most notably Paul, Kawhi Leonard and DeMar DeRozan.
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