Many dream of going to be the NBA, but very few make it to the top. For a kid at a tender age, the dream takes root, and what’s a better tale than dreaming of becoming like Michael Jordan? That’s what happened with a 12-year-old kid who declared to his mother of making it to the NBA while watching a McDonald’s All-Amercian game. 

Rashad McCants had an underwhelming career in the NBA. But the 39-year-old NBA veteran has always had a singular focus when he was a 12-year-old kid: To be better than Michael Jordan. 

Measuring his competition

Rashad McCants sat down with Anton Daniels on a podcast and he reminisces about the time he made a promise to his mother to make it big in basketball. His father recognized an early potential in him and started training him. “My dad always had me play up” to hone his skills and build confidence. He was never playing with kids from his age group.

“I was at 12 playing with 25 years old. So it gives you an incentive where you can fit in with 25-year-olds at 12-13,” said McCants. He added, “You start measuring up your competition. In your age group, you say all right, they can’t fuck with me at all.”

That’s how hard he was training to be like Jordan. He wanted to be a player that future generations would aspire to emulate. 

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McCants had his eyes on the prize

His unique training approach as a kid upped his threshold. “As kids back, then we weren’t thinking about no NBA, no nothing it was just How can I be better to Michael Jordan. I want to be like Mike. I want them to be like me. To be thinking about that at 12 is different,” said McCants about his relentless ambition. 

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As a college fresher at the University of North Carolina, he had it all like Jordan. As a sophomore, he improved his average to 20 points per game. However, he couldn’t find his rhythm as a rookie in the NBA, where he was just averaging 7.9 points per game. McCants seems to have accepted his underwhelming short stint in the league. But even after parting ways with the NBA, he found huge success in the Big3 league. 

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