“I asked him, ‘Why are you even doing this?’ He didn’t need to prove anything” - Etan Thomas on Michael Jordan playing through pain for the Wizards

Michael Jordan and his tenure on the Washington Wizards was mentioned in a Wednesday article written by Brian Fonseca of “BasketballNews”.

Known for his utter dominance while playing for the Bulls, many spoke of Jordan’s time on Washington as tarnishing his career. During the article, Fonseca collected some previous mentions from old teammate to Michael Jordan and Etan Thomas regarding the notion.

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Michael Jordan played through excrutiating pain for the Wizards

Etan recalls asking Michael:

“’Why are you even doing this?’”

Then Thomas goes on to explain:

“He didn’t need to prove anything”

Michael Jordan is a 6x NBA champion with six NBA Finals MVP awards and five NBA regular season MVP awards, having also been named NBA defensive player of the year (87-88), and NBA Rookie of the Year (84-85).

As a 10-time NBA scoring leader, Michael Jordan has proved to an immense capacity how successful his offensive game was. The 14x NBA All-Star has many more awards, inducting him into the list of 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996. During this year, the NBA picked a 75th Anniversary Team for 2021, of which he was front and center.

MJ returned to the NBA to play for Washington for two seasons from 2001 to 2003. During his time playing for the Wizards he averaged 21.2 points, 5.9 rebounds, 4.4 assists, and 1.5 steals.

While Jordan played for Chicago, he averaged 31.5 points, 6.3 rebounds, 5.4 assists, and 2.5 steals per game across 13 seasons. By comparing the stats directly, one can already see that Michael Jordan’s time on Washington was a lesser effort than his time on the Bulls.

Etan Thomas gave context to him questioning Jordan’s efforts at the time:

“This is the part that people don’t understand: how injured he was. I saw it firsthand … Somehow it leaked that he was getting his knee drained, and I was sitting there like, ‘I see him do that every other day!’ Literally, his knee would swell up like the Elephant Man!"

"I was sitting in the training room getting some treatment or whatever, and he was on the table next to me. I saw it! They came in, and they pulled out this needle and drained his knee. They drained it and this black-tar goo stuff came out and he was in excruciating pain and it looked terrible!”

With this knowledge, Thomas questioning Michael makes sense. Why would Jordan put himself through this torture to play so hard for a squad that he is merely a temporary entity for? Well, if anyone knows MJ, they probably have the answer. The moment that man stepped on the basketball court, he gave it his all, no matter what. Basketball was everything to MJ, it was all he lived, all he knew.

For any team to give him his last chance to play in the NBA, Jordan would inevitably be immensely grateful. MJ could always work on repairing his body after his time on the court was done and he knew his own limits. It might sound far out that he was going to the extent he was in order to keep playing. But it is the sacrifices he was willing to make in order to keep his life tied to what he loved most: basketball.