Michael Jordan’s standards in Washington were never going to soften just because he was past his Chicago Bulls peak. According to former Wizards big man Brendan Haywood, Jordan brought the same exacting edge to the locker room that made him a legend on the floor - and he expected everybody around him to keep up.
Speaking on the Straight Game Podcast, Haywood described Jordan as relentless about preparation, accountability, and effort. “He was always demanding,” Haywood said.
“Mike is one of those ones where if you can’t help him win, he has absolutely zero time for you. Zero.
But like he’s not trying to be your big brother. He is not trying to be your mentor.
He needs you to be exactly where you say you’re going to be. He needs you to do exactly what you’re supposed to do.
And you got to handle yourself.”
That attitude came through in a story Haywood told about a teammate who went out with Jordan the night before a game and then looked completely off once it was time to play. Jordan didn’t offer sympathy. He offered a blunt reminder.
“I remember one of my teammates, he went out with Mike the night before,” Haywood said. “And that game, man, he was playing horribly.
I mean, he was playing terrible. And Mike was like, ‘Man, see, can’t light the candle at both ends.’
At halftime, Mike’s coming. He said, ‘You can’t light the candle at both ends.
If you go out, you got to be ready. You got to be ready to play the next day.’
“He’s like, ‘But Mike, I went out with you,'” Haywood continued. “He said, ‘But that’s me, though.’
Mike’s like, ‘Listen, I do this, okay? I can do [this].
The thing is, I can go out till 5 or do whatever I’m doing, and I can still be here. You can’t.
You got to know the difference.’ So he didn’t care if you kicked it with him, if you stayed up and gambled with him.
“Whatever you did, when 7:00 came, you bets be ready,” Haywood added. “That’s all I know.”
The point, at least from Jordan’s perspective, was simple: what he could handle wasn’t automatically what everybody else could handle. He expected teammates to understand that difference, whether they were out with him or not.
That same idea shows up in the way others have described Jordan’s physical gifts. Magic Johnson once called him “the strongest, not basketball player, athlete I’ve ever seen,” and explained why Jordan could get away with a schedule that would wreck most players.
“Because he can do just what you said. If I tried to do that, I’d be 0-14, no assists, I’d be dragging, and he tried to get me to do it on the Dream Team.
He was like, ‘MJ, MJ.’ I said, ‘What’s up?’
He said, ‘Come on, hang with me.’ I said, ‘Mike, I can’t hang till 4:00.
You have your drinks, get up, play 18 rounds of golf, sleep an hour, and then go and get 30 by halftime. I can’t do that.
I know who I am.'”
Charles Barkley has also said Jordan played 36 holes of golf the morning of a game.
The Wizards years, though, never delivered the payoff Jordan wanted. Washington missed the playoffs in both of his seasons there, and Jordan retired for the third and final time in 2003. He averaged 21.2 points, 5.9 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 1.5 steals, and 0.5 blocks per game as a Wizard.
Even with those numbers, Jordan later regretted the Wizards chapter. His basketball story, as the source puts it, should have ended with the Bulls in 1998.
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