John Starks on why Michael Jordan will always be the GOAT: “You can’t get inside his head. With LeBron … you can get inside his head” originally appeared on Basketball Network.
There are many things about Michael Jordan’s case as the all-time greatest that don’t need a sales pitch. He was built for dominance. Before social media fueled comparisons or graphics made it easier to stack legends side by side, Jordan already had the kind of resume that was the benchmark of other legends.
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He had the six rings, the 10 scoring titles and the accolades. But what separated him was his ability to crush wills and set psychological traps that opponents couldn’t escape.
Jordan’s mind
John Starks knew firsthand what facing Jordan was like. He played right inside the heart of that era. The line between admiration and frustration was razor-thin. He battled with the Bulls icon, and the Knicks built game plans around the impossibility of stopping MJ.
And most times … it didn’t work.
“Michael — you can never get to him. Mentally, you can never get to him,” Starks once said. “Believe me, I tried. You can never break his will, you can never get inside his head. With LeBron [James], I can see that a little bit, you can get inside his head … Early on you probably could say that a lot. But as he matures, he’s getting better at that.”
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The 1990s were unforgiving for Eastern Conference hopefuls. No matter how strong the Knicks looked on paper, or how physical they tried to play on the floor, the mountain they could never fully climb had Jordan stamped at the top.
Starks isn’t trying to deny LeBron James his place in the sport’s highest tier. James has climbed enough mountains of his own: four championships, four MVP awards, over 40,000 career points and a statistical longevity that borders on the impossible. But for those who faced Jordan at full speed, what sticks is the unshakable menace. He was a predator and once he smelled blood, the game was as good as done.
The Knicks-Bulls rivalry of the ’90s was perhaps the most brutal stage for this contrast. In 1993, New York held a 2-0 series lead over Chicago in the Eastern Conference finals. The Garden was ready. The city was surging. And then Jordan flipped the series upside down, taking the next four games and silencing any thought of a torch being passed.
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That year, he averaged 32.2 points per game across the series while hitting game-winners and staring down defenders like a ghost no one could outrun. Starks was one of those defenders. And even when he played his best, it often wasn’t enough.
Unbreakable spirit
Starks saw Jordan break teams. He saw him break spirits. That sort of psychological chokehold on a generation is what creates a legacy.
“Michael — you can never break him,” Starks said. “I think every player that played against him would tell you the same thing.”
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The admiration is a lived truth. That’s the part that separates Jordan from his successors. James, for all his brilliance, often had to grow into his mental toughness earlier in his career. The Miami Heat in 2011, the 2010 exit against the Boston Celtics, the media storms that followed him in the Cleveland Cavaliers — those were real hurdles, and they exposed cracks that Jordan never publicly allowed.
Jordan wasn’t built to be likable or careful. He was built to win, and to do it without letting anyone close the gap between himself and the rim or between himself and the crown.
There’s also a matter of era. The NBA in the ’90s was a harder floor to walk on. Fewer touch fouls, less spacing, more elbows, more clenched teeth. Starks, who played in that terrain, doesn’t need to romanticize it to make his point.
He simply remembers what it was like to guard the man who didn’t flinch.
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This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jul 4, 2025, where it first appeared.