“I was amazed” – Brendan Haywood was in awe of 40-year-old Michael Jordan’s precision when he was teaching Wizards teammates his best moves originally appeared on Basketball Network.
The Washington Wizards were primarily composed of young players when Michael Jordan joined the team in 2001. These youngsters were eager to develop as players and the addition of a legend like Jordan only intensified their hunger for knowledge about the game.
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Center Brendan Haywood, who was recruited by the Wizards that same year, recognized early on that he was in for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He knew that the chance to learn from the greatest player of all time was something not all players get to have.
According to Haywood, the early 2000s Wizards were fortunate as Jordan didn’t just provide them with guidance and encouragement. Instead, MJ took a proactive approach in sharing his wealth of experience with them in practice, breaking down fundamentals and divulging intricacies and nuances of his game.
“I would watch him teach Bobby Simmons the footwork to score in the mid-post,” he told HoopsHype in 2020. “Everything he did was calculated. Nothing was done by accident. He was reading your lead foot. He understood where to go and how to get you off balance and get to his pull-up jumper and how to get your arm off of him if you were trying to be physical.”
Jordan was a true master
Haywood was already well aware of Jordan’s legacy, having idolized him growing up and having joined the University of North Carolina in college. However, he still found himself in complete awe of Mike’s impeccable skills when they finally became teammates in the pros.
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Growing up, Haywood had already heard countless stories about Jordan, but witnessing it firsthand in Washington was an entirely different experience. The sheer beauty of MJ’s remarkably polished signature moves exceeded his expectations.
However, what truly stood out to him was Jordan’s uncompromising attention to detail.
As Haywood described it, every move MJ made was executed with a level of precision that showcased not only his greatness but also his dedication to the game.
“Watching him, you got to learn a lot,” Haywood further said of MJ. “I was amazed. When you were a kid and watching MJ, you think: ‘Wow. He is really good.’ But when you are an adult and you are watching him teach someone else, you see that every single thing that this guy does is calculated. He knows exactly what he is going to do because he has done it over and over again with repetition in practice.”
A GOAT-level work ethic
Like most of his Wizards teammates at the time, Haywood also held a deep appreciation for the invaluable mentorship they received directly from Jordan. As he looked back at it, he is grateful for the rare opportunity to learn the importance of work ethic and discipline by constantly observing MJ’s relentless dedication during his entire stint with the Wizards.
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As he went on in his NBA career, Haywood met and encountered numerous exceptional NBA players. Yet, he believed that the work ethic Jordan displayed even at a stage in his career when many would have slowed down already is still beyond compare.
“It was a learning experience. You got to see up-close what made him who he was,” Haywood reflected. “He was like 40 years old. He didn’t have anything to prove. But he was still one of the hardest workers.”
Applying what they learned from MJ
Apart from Haywood, former Wizards shooting guard Rip Hamilton also made the most of the chance to learn from His Airness. In fact, Hamilton once revealed that Jordan diligently taught him his most unstoppable move during his prime.
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Rip immediately applied everything he learned from Jordan in actual games and it unsurprisingly helped him become one of the most effective scorers of his era.
“People look at my mid-range game and say I have one of the best of all time, but a lot of that came off of being in the practices with MJ. I remember one time I was playing against him, and he took two hard dribbles to the basket and pulled up, and he was like, ‘Rip, add that to your game. That’s the hardest play in the game of basketball to guard.’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ And he was like, ‘Because as a defender, they are backpedaling, so he can’t jump to the highest point to block your shot. He’s always off-balance, and you’re always on-balance,'” Hamilton once shared.
“People all across the league kept hitting me up like, ‘How did you get your medium-range game so good?’ From the tools of Michael Jordan. From the opportunity to be around him for the two years I was in Washington,” he continued.
In retrospect, MJ didn’t manage to lead the Wizards to higher heights during his run with the team. However, it’s safe to say that he did his best to help the team, even going out of his way and teaching them the same exact moves and techniques he used during his prime.
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Jordan’s time with them proves just how a legendary figure can have a profound impact on a developing team. By exhibiting unwavering discipline and drive, he left an indelible mark on the young squad.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jun 19, 2025, where it first appeared.