Michael Jordan left off Laney High varsity in 1978 — omission that he kept as motivation

Michael Jordan was not named to the Laney High School varsity basketball roster as a sophomore in 1978, a moment he later used as motivation while building a career that included six NBA championships. The omission — while he remained in the school’s basketball programme on the junior varsity team — has become one of the most recounted episodes from his early life.

When Laney High School in Wilmington, North Carolina posted its varsity roster in 1978, Jordan found his name missing while classmate Leroy Smith’s appeared; Jordan was placed on the junior varsity squad where most younger players competed. Laney was returning 14 of its 15 varsity players that year, leaving a single opening that went to Smith, who stood 6 feet 7 inches, while Jordan at the time was variously described as around 5 feet 9 inches to 5 feet 11 inches according to different accounts.

Jordan later described how much the omission stung, and the episode has been framed in some retellings as him being “cut” from the varsity team; the NBA’s own profile states that he did not make the varsity squad as a skinny sophomore. ESPN has reported that Jordan used the memory of the list as motivation while working out, thinking about seeing the roster without his name whenever he felt tired.

Physical development followed: Jordan had grown to 6 feet 3 inches by the summer before his junior year and returned to Laney’s varsity squad, earning high school All-American honors and accepting a place at the University of North Carolina. As a freshman in 1982 he made the game-winning shot against Georgetown in the NCAA championship game.

Jordan’s professional ascent continued when the Chicago Bulls selected him third overall in the 1984 NBA Draft. He won his first NBA title with the Bulls in 1991 and captured three consecutive championships thereafter; after a brief retirement to pursue baseball and a return to the NBA he led Chicago to another three straight titles from 1996 to 1998, finishing with six championships, six NBA Finals MVP awards and five regular-season MVP awards.

Accounts of the episode underline that Jordan was not excluded from the sport entirely: he remained in the high school programme on junior varsity, used the experience as a personal spur, received opportunities to develop, and improved markedly over the following year. The narrative in many retellings stresses that the disappointment mattered because Jordan kept it in mind as part of his motivation rather than because the omission alone created his future success.

Jordan later recounted that he was bothered to see the list without his name and remembered being angry, particularly because Smith had made the team, and the moment — a teenager looking at a roster and not seeing his name — was one he never quite forgot.