Sean Carroll

And the answer is none of that.

Who cares?

What matters is who wins the game.

And, you know, you need to watch the game to see what happens.

I do remember, you know, for the fact that it's a team sport, it is very important.

Apparently there was a story.

I don't even know if this story is true, but it's one of those stories that is a pretty good story.

So you tell it anyway.

Michael Jordan on the Chicago Bulls in the early days, you know, we forget now, but he really struggled financially.

for the team, for the Bulls to win.

You know, Michael Jordan was incredibly effective right out of the gate.

As soon as he landed in the NBA, he was very, very dominant, but his team didn't go very far.

And it was mostly because the team wasn't very good in different ways, you know, and it was just hard for them to get over past really good teams that were around, like the Boston Celtics, the Detroit Pistons, etc.,

And Phil Jackson at some point had just become the new coach of the Bulls, and he was trying to convince Michael Jordan that it was a team game and that he should sort of not just try to do everything himself.

And the story, which, again, I don't know if it's true, goes – so at one point Phil Jackson says, all right, Michael, if you think that you're so good and you're better than everybody else, you're going to play one on five, OK?

We're going to play by the –

Real rules of the NBA, but there's going to be five people on the other team, and you're just going to be the one person.

That's going to be your entire team.

And Michael Jordan is like, sure, all right, I'll do it.

I'll beat these chumps.