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Jordan is the reason I love basketball. I didn’t even like the Bulls, watched the 96 Finals actually rooting for the Sonics (the German Schrempf bias), but that quickly changed to wanting Jordan to score as much as possible. I could never pinpoint what it was, but watching “The Last Dance” I found the simple answer: his competitiveness. I never watched his 80s games but that playoff series against the Celtics in ‘86 coming off an injury must have been close to the best individual performance that decade. LeBron is the best athlete of all time, Curry is probably the best shooter but Jordan is the best competitor. Even more impressive after his comeback, how he reinvented his game. The lost art of the mid-range jumper…

Random thought on the Pistons: they barely lost the 2005 Finals (vs Spurs) with Carlos Arroyo at PG, who is an absolute superstar in Puerto Rico. In 2004, I was in San Juan when he led their national team to an historic 19(!) point upset win over Team USA in the Athens Olympics. The following celebration on the island could have been mistaken for a declaration of independence! Arroyo is one of the more underrated NBA point guards of his era.