Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 25, 1993 TAG: 9302240192
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Joel Achenbach
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
JORDAN JUST GOT BETTER WITH AGE
Q: Why did Michael Jordan average less than 18 points a game in college?A: Michael Jordan, the world's greatest basketball player, averaged a meager 17.7 points a game in three years at the University of North Carolina. Not once did he score as many as 40 points in a game. Why not? Because, to be fair to the opposition, he played on his knees.
Just a theory! Actually, he did everything his coach, Dean Smith, wanted him to do. Like pass the ball a lot. Move it around! Teamwork! Why drive-and-dunk when you can be a passing sensation? It's the Tar Heel style. And it explains why "Dean Smith" is the punch line to the famous sports joke, "Who was the last person to hold Michael Jordan to under 20 points in a game?"
The folks at UNC defend themselves.
"Coach Smith's philosophy is that it is a team game. If one guy takes 45 shots, you're not going to be a very successful team," says Rick Brewer, the sports information director. "We were a much better basketball team with him passing the ball, playing defense, and of course shooting."
Not everyone agrees. Jim Naughton, a former Washington Post reporter and author of "Taking to the Air: The Rise of Michael Jordan," says that Dean Smith teams are underachievers, in part because "nobody has developed a big enough ego. . . . You want a couple of guys who say give me the ball, I'm going to win the game for us."
Jordan won quite a few games, and as a freshman in 1982 he made the last shot to beat Georgetown, 63-62, and win the national championship. But there were other stars at North Carolina during the Jordan years - James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Brad Daugherty, Kenny Smith - and even though he won several national Player of the Year awards he wasn't what he is today, a phenomenon, an icon.
He wasn't even the first draft choice out of college. The pro ball orthodoxy in 1984 was that a team needed a big man, a 7-footer, to win a championship. So the Houston Rockets picked Hakeem Olajuwon (who proved to be a superstar) and the Portland Trailblazers picked Sam Bowie (um, a very nice person, no doubt). Chicago then picked Jordan, but the team executives were kind of blue. They wanted a center, not some scrawny guard!
Jordan became a superstar in part because Chicago back then was such a lousy team, says Sam Smith, author of "The Jordan Rules." Jordan had to do everything, and he averaged well over 30 points a game. But Naughton makes a final point: Jordan also got better. His outside shot improved. He's not just a dash-to-the-bucket, spin-and-jam player anymore. The fact is, he worked hard.
That's the problem with being a superstar: People think it's just magic.
Q: Why is Harley-Davidson the only American motorcycle company?
A: There would be no American motorcycles whatsoever if it weren't for the Hell's Angels and all those other bad, snarling, smelly, dirty-leathered bikers.
Before the Great Depression there were more than 150 American motorcycle manufacturers. They had the greatest names: Hercules. Peerless. Rupp. Greyhound. Doodlebug. Merkel. Red Arrow. Playboy. Moto-Master. Zephyr.
Admit it, you'd give anything to light out for the hills on a Zephyr.
There was even a Sears Roebuck motorcycle. How you could wear leather and ride a Sears is a mystery we can't answer.
All these companies went out of business during the Depression, when motorcycles became a luxury. Only Harley-Davidson and Indian survived, because they had been around many years (Harley since 1903) and had police and military contracts. Indian finally succumbed in 1954, a victim of its own poor quality, and that left just Harley.
The arrival of Japanese motorcycles in the 1960s fueled a boom in the market, and Harley coasted for years, fat and happy. But the Japanese bikes were better. Harley nearly went under in 1981.
Why didn't it? Because of Marlon Brando. "The Wild One." That Brando movie of the 1950s helped shape the image of the American biker as an outlaw, an iconoclast, a stud muffin. The Japanese bikes purred. A Harley roared. A Harley shook like a monster, the vibration built into the design. Harleys had intense customer loyalty - so intense, they'd feel like clobbering someone riding one of those sissy Kawasakis.
"There were better, less expensive motorcycles available, especially very early in the 1980s, but what kept the doors open was that there were hard-core people who wouldn't settle for anything other than a Harley," says Ken Schmidt, spokesman for Harley-Davidson Inc. "Nothing feels, looks or sounds like a Harley."
And nothing leaked oil like a Harley for a while there. But in 1981, a group of 13 Harley managers, most of them riders, bought the company from the previous owners and improved the bikes.
"What we sell is a lifestyle," Schmidt says. "You're buying into the Harley-Davidson family. The riding with friends, the rallies, the leather clothing."
Oh, and by the way: Brando wasn't riding a Harley. He was on a Triumph. Some cheesy British bike.
Washington Post Writers Group
Joel Achenbach writes for the Style section of The Washington Post.