"You know better. You grew up watching me" - Michael Jordan showed a Wizards teammate that he could shoot 3-pointers

“You know better. You grew up watching me” – Michael Jordan showed a Wizards teammate that he could shoot 3-pointers originally appeared on Basketball Network.

Michael Jordan wasn’t known as a great 3-point shooter during his reign with the Chicago Bulls. However, that didn’t mean he couldn’t nail it from beyond the arc. In fact, former Washington Wizards center Brendan Haywood said Jordan could hit it even with a bigger defender in front him.

The 7’0″ big man was a rookie when MJ returned to the NBA and joined the Wizards. For all of Jordan’s greatness, Haywood knew well that 3-point shooting wasn’t one of his strongest suits.

During a scrimmage, Haywood, for some reason, told Jordan that he wasn’t really a good 3-point shooter. Right then and there, MJ pulled up from the deep and sank it in front of him.

“Mike wasn’t known for shooting the 3,” Haywood told The Ringer in 2018. “One day, he was dribbling, he was talking to me, and I was like, ‘Man, you don’t shoot 3s.’ He just pulled up from 3 right as the scrimmage ended, and it went right through the net. And he was like, ‘You know better.”

“You grew up watching me. You know better.’ It was one of those things where he was always competitive. He was always pushing the envelope. He didn’t care who you were. He didn’t care that I went to UNC as well. It was just one of those things where Mike he always want to cut your heart out,” he added.

MJ still wanted to prove something

After Jordan casually hit a 3-pointer on him, Haywood understood that MJ’s game is timeless. More importantly, he realized that Jordan takes it as a challenge whenever you tell him he couldn’t do something.

To this day, Haywood still remembers how competitive the six-time hcamp was despite being nearly 40 years old. For him, Jordan’s burning desire to prove he could still beat everybody even in practice was truly admirable.

“He was incredibly intense,” the UNC alum said of a 38-year-old Jordan. “He still wanted to win everything. He was still super competitive. He was still in practice talking junk to everybody.”

Jordan’s mentality in practice

Jordan’s body may have lost it’s power when he played for the Wizards, but the same couldn’t be said about his mentality. Apart from Haywood, Hubert Davis was another former Wizards player and UNC alum who could attest to that.

Davis once recalled how MJ locked him down like crazy during a team practice. It’s worth noting that Davis was a backup guard for the Wizards, a third-stringer for the better part.

Even if that was the case, Jordan didn’t care. Davis himself began to wonder what was up with MJ. That’s when he learned that for Jordan, every scrimmage was just like Game 7 of a championship series.

“I just was like, ‘What is wrong with you? We’re on the same team!” Davis remembered telling Jordan. “You’re that competitive that you want to compete against me? I’m a role player. You’re the best that’s ever played.’ He said, ‘This is no different than playing in Game 7 of the NBA Finals—competing is competing.'”

Jordan failed to lead the Wizards to the playoffs during his two-year stint with the team. Nevertheless, he was able to show his teammates how a true winner competes, be it in an actual game or in practice.

This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Aug 1, 2025, where it first appeared.

“You know better. You grew up watching me” – Michael Jordan showed a Wizards teammate that he could shoot 3-pointers

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