Best All Time College Basketball Player

What goes into being a great college player? From my point of view, it is a combination of great individual ability, special personal records, future success, and team achievement. While there are many players who excelled in college basketball, set records and won titles, none dominated the field as completely as Michael Jordan.

It is easy to overlook Jordan’s extraordinary collegiate achievements. Why? Well, quite simply, many people forget that Jordan even went to college because he was the best professional ever to set foot on a court. Yet, while it is easy to look at Jordan’s career and just fast forward to the NBA, the truth is that this would do Jordan an injustice. As Jordan himself admits, his future greatness was forged at North Carolina while playing on a title team with James Worthy in 1982 and then honing his skills under the legendary coaching talents of Dean Smith. In fact, as if to emphasize this fact, Smith was perhaps the one man Jordan gave great (or more truthfully “any”) credit to in his controversial Hall of Fame speech this past year.

In any case, regardless of where Jordan attributes credit, his collegiate years were a period of incredible success that prepared him to dominate the NBA for two decades. In 1982, Jordan won both the ACC and NCAA freshman of the year awards as sidekick to future Hall of Fame Laker James Worthy on perhaps the strongest title team in collegiate basketball history. In one of the most classic moments of Jordans’ basketball career, both college and professional, he made the last second buzzer beater to clinch the 1982 title in what he later called a turning point in his career.

After Worthy left, the Tar Heels became Jordan’s team and, despite playing without an elite talent beside him, Jordan dragged his 1983 and 1984 teams deep into the NCAA tournament. He did this while becoming a first team All American in 1983 and then sweeping the National Awards (NCAA and ACC Player of the Year and the Adolph Rupp and John Wooden Awards) in 1984. Ultimately, by the time he entered the NBA, Jordan had dominated college basketball in every possible way, both as an individual talent and a crucial member of a historic team, and had cemented himself as one of the top all-time college b-ball greats.

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What makes Jordan the greatest, however, is the way he re-popularized the sport of basketball. Beginning in college, and continuing into the NBA, Jordan used his incredible drive to win and unrivalled athletic talents to re-invent the sport for young people and become the Greatest of All Time.

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