Let's cut it out with this Michael Jordan myth

[snopes]

Beware of the story that might be shared today when Michael Jordan is inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame: the one that involves him getting cut as a sophomore from his high school varsity basketball team.

It is inconveniently false, Ruby Sutton, physical education teacher at Laney High in Wilmington, N.C., told the Charlotte Observer.

"Back then, [most] 10th-graders played JV; that's just the way it was," Sutton said. "Nobody ever 'cut' Michael Jordan."

Laney High Athletic Director Fred Lynch, who was then an assistant basketball coach, told the Observer that the team did make an exception that year, though, permitting one sophomore to play on the varsity.

"Leroy [Smith] was not a better basketball player than Mike, he just had size," Lynch said. "We didn't have a lot of tall kids, and Leroy was 6-6, 6-7 . . . and [head coach] Pop Herring thought we had plenty of guards but needed size.

"The Hollywood version is that Mike got cut, came back the next year, and was great. That's not true. He played on the JV team, was our best JV player, and played on the varsity his final two years and scored more than 1,400 points [including a triple-double average his senior season: 29.2 points, 11.6 rebounds and 10.1 assists]. It was never a situation where Mike was ever a bad player."

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-...,7547971.story

[abqbrick]

I thought I remembered reading somewhere where Isiah Thomas also disclaimed the myth of the All-Star game "freeze-out". Anyone know what magazine/interview that may have been from? I want to say I read it when Jordan retired the first time.