I Never Thought I Would See This Again

one of the best things that can happen to a young basketball player in their career is get compared to Michael Jordan one of the worst things that can happen to a young player in their career is get compared to Michael Jordan for every player that gets compared to MJ and is successful in the NBA there's five more who fall a mile short and make the comparison seem Blasphemous in the first place Anthony Edwards is the latest player added to this list of hopeful Jordan successors only this time it feels real I mean the memes and the jokes were funny at first but now this is just getting uncanny the highlights the trash talking the Swagger the Charisma being compared to the best player to ever touch a basketball is an impossible task for any player to live up to and yet we can't help but to make the comparison so how similar is Anthony Edwards to a young Michael Jordan is this comparison even warranted or is this gold standard still as unattainable and unrealistic as ever today's video is sponsored by Draft Kings with the NBA Playoffs heating up it's time to bring the Hoops action to the palm of your hands with my partners at DraftKings Sportsbook right now all new customers who bet just $5 on anything will receive $150 in bonus bets instantly that's right receive $150 in bonus bets just for placing a $5 wager so even if if your team loses you my friend are still a winner and for all returning customers DraftKings is offering a no sweat same game parlay orgpx every single day during the playoffs and if sports betting is not available in your state you can still get in on the action with DraftKings daily fantasy and have the shot to win cash prizes just download the draftking Sportsbook app now new customers use promo code Jimmy High Roller bet just $5 on any wager and get $150 in bonus bets instantly that's promo code Jimmy highy roller only at draftking Sportsbook in 1995 a young Guard from California was making a name for himself in the basketball world as a junior in college the kid was considered by some to be the best college basketball player in the country and with his 6'5 in all-in-one shooting guard package it was only a matter of time before the infamous comparison to Michael Jordan was made later on we would learn that despite his incredible skill set and Hall of Fame pedigree the Michael Jordan comp was never really warranted you might be familiar with this player his name was Ray Allen and looking back outside of playing the same position there wasn't much he and MJ had in common but this wasn't the first and surely not the last time a player received a Jordan comp in 1986 Ron Harper might have been the first player to ever be called the next Michael Jordan the closest Harper ever got to Jordan was playing with him Harold Miner was compared heavily to Jordan coming out of USC in 1992 one season and a bad injury later Miner would become a cautionary tale for anyone eager to dub a player as the next Michael Jordan This did not stop people from dubbing players as the next Michael Jordan in 1993 Penny Hardaway received the comp the next year it was Grant Hill a couple years after that it was Jerry Stackhouse in 1997 Vince Carter was named the next Michael Jordan and this time around it actually felt like it might become a real thing thing a 6'6 in highflying shooting guard out of North Carolina that sounds awfully familiar but despite putting together a Hall of Fame career Vince Carter just like every player that came before him was in fact not the next Michael Jordan around the turn of the century it was Kobe Bryant who was next up as Jordan's successor Jordan was out of the NBA by now and the league was in desperate search of a new poster child Kobe Bryant came just in the nick of time Kobe said he modeled his game after MJ a statement that seemed like a far-fetched attempt to draw comparisons to the greatest player of all time from a 19-year-old kid but with every passing season Kobe hadn't just become like Mike he became a carbon copy of Mike 20 years later Kobe Bryant built a legacy of his own but he still Remains the closest thing we have ever seen to Jordan since then there's been a few more ill-advised next Michael Jordans LeBron has been compared to Michael to the extent that you can't say one of their Nam names in a sentence without mentioning the other Dwayne way generated Jordan comps after his championship run in 2006 but that's about it after two decades of attempting to find the next Michael Jordan the basketball World settled into the fact that maybe the next Michael Jordan didn't exist and even worse giving a young kid the comparison was almost a curse that would mentally handicap them from becoming their own player after LeBron in the mid 2000s it became this sort of Unwritten rule to compare any player to Michael Jordan not only because it usually didn't make any sense but because the track record of Jordan's successors was looking pretty bleak oddly enough most players who received the comp didn't actually play or act or look or carry themselves like Mike they were just really good sort of kind of like Mike which brings us to today and this guy who is the first player in about 15 years to be tagged with the infamous next Michael Jordan label I mean come on we all see it the similarities are striking but due to the history of this comparison no one wanted to be the first to actually say it but in the midst of the postseason run he is putting together right now we're all thinking the same thing Anthony Edwards reminds us of Michael Jordan and this time we don't need to be baited into this comparison or hastily rushed into it ant is shoving the comp into our faces every time he steps on the court the highflying acrobatics the overwhelming scoring barges and lightning quick First Step the Cutthroat Trash Talk the irrevocable confidence even the commercials the energy the Charisma where others seem to always be leaving one or two boxes unchecked Anthony Edwards pretty much checks them all some fans are even saying he looks like MJ which he doesn't but for the sake of fun we'll let them run with that according to Chris brousard who reached out to Jordan earlier this season even Michael Jordan said he sees the similarities between himself and Anthony Edwards well I reached out to the goat today Michael Jordan Jordan said there are similarities in their games he agreed so Jordan said there's similarities there're similarities all right and in many interviews over the past year Edwards has addressed the comparison stating although he can't deny it and he sees the similarities he would rather it all just stop but when you're doing the things ant is doing right now how could we possibly help ourselves now Edwards has only played in 18 career playoff games not enough to crack any all-time NBA postseason leaderboards but we can see how ant Stacks up against MJ through his first 18 playoff games where despite ant being historically great Michael Jordan is still in a completely different tier of his own he scored more rebounded more made more assists pretty much every metric outside of shooting efficiency Mike was on another level Michael had a far worse team to start his playoff career which probably led to him being being required to do more on the court but there is no denying that he is still the gold standard even from the very beginning of his career and this is where a lot of people get caught up in this whole comparison ant is incredible he's what the NBA needs right now but Michael Jordan was pretty unanimously the best player in the NBA by his third season and by his fourth season he had already made an all defensive team multiple all-nba teams one defensive player of the year and a league MVP Anthony Edwards is great but he has projected to make an all-nba team for the first time this year in his fourth season in the league how could we possibly compare a young star who is just now ascending to Superstar status to the greatest player of all time according to basketball references similarity score metric the most similar player to Michael Jordan throughout NBA history was Oscar Robertson but this metric only considers the shape and quality of a player's career not how they actually played or their skill set if we refer to crafted NBA's historical similarity app which factors in everything a player does on the court from their defense to their offense to their efficiency in creation and everything in between the closest thing to Michael Jordan in year four was Clyde Drexler in 1988 followed by a bunch of Kobe and Dwayne Wade Seasons if we limit our list of eligible candidates down to the PACE and bace era or the last 10 NBA Seasons then the most similar player to MJ is actually 2015 Jimmy Butler followed by olao in 2016 sheay gilis Alexander in 2020 and Bradley Beal in 2018 Anthony Edwards doesn't even crack this list until the seventh and eighth spots with his 2022 and 2023 Seasons so again why now and why him of all players to resurrect this next MJ tag well because being good and even playing a similar game is just a sliver of what makes Anthony Edwards like Mike in terms of play style ant is probably closer to a young Dwayne Wade than he is to Jordan and I think most fans are aware of this but for a lot of fans it's not that Anthony Edwards plays exactly like a young Michael Jordan it's that he makes us feel the same way a young Michael Jordan made fans feel 35 years ago he doesn't just put together crazy dunks he electrifies the crowd and gets us on our feet the kind of moments that leave you and your buddies buzzing about long after the game is over he doesn't just take over games he talks trash while he's doing it and he's got a pretty solid track record of backing it up he's not just a part of a winning team at just 22 years old he is leading a winning team he's not just really good he's hungry and he's driven and is larger than life character and skill set and flare only grow larger in the biggest moments even off the court his mannerisms mentality and personality have Jordan written all over it being incredible on the court isn't the defining factor that provokes MJ comps with Edwards in fact even before ant was dropping Jaws on a contending team many Scouts and analysts made note of how eily similar Edwards was to a young Jordan dating all the way back to 2021 and long before we knew he would be this special saying Anthony Edwards reminds us of Jordan isn't saying we think he's going to win six titles or be the greatest player of all time it's saying that we saw Michael Jordan play and now we're seeing Anthony Edwards play and the similarities are just staring Us in the face now one thing I know for certain is that people who watched Michael Jordan play are the last people on Earth to say anyone plays or resembles Jordan in any way I mean the guy is referred to as Black Jesus to some former players for crying out loud so even when former players begin to come out and Rave about the similarities between him and Anthony Edwards you can bet the comparison is as warranted as it's ever been see not every player that garnered a Michael Jordan comparison is similar to the next there are players that play Like Jordan the footwork the mid-range game getting to the rim there's players that act like Jordan The Psychotic competitors there's the players that move like Jordan the freak athletes and then there's players who got compared to MJ for almost no other reason besides the fact that they were really good there have been many players to fulfill one two maybe three of these attributes but no one has ever quite lived up to all four here's an overly complicated diagram of these proclaimed Jordan successors which boxes they checked and where they fell short players that acted like him the freak athletes players who were really good and everything in between Grant Hill Alan Iverson and Penny Hardaway got Jordan comparisons early on but outside of just being really good they didn't really have anything in common with MJ D rozan Harold Miner and Jerry stack house Played Like Jordan but they weren't quite the freak athlete that Jordan was on the other end Zack LaVine Andrew Wiggins and Ron Harper were freak athletes early in their careers but that alone should have never been enough evidence to deem them the next Michael Jordan but when you pair some of these attributes together we'll start to find players who came closer to the Jordan comparison LeBron McGrady Vince Derrik Rose and Len Bias were all freak athletes who were really good but they didn't really play Like Jordan and they wen't psychotic with their approach on winning Kawhi Leonard plays like Jordan and he's really good but he's an emotional robot with a 29in vert which leaves us with three players who have probably come closer to the Jordan comp than anyone else since Jordan's departure from the league Dwayne Wade who had a fairly similar game to Jordan was really good and was a freak athlete and Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Butler who play Like Jordan were and are really good respectively and are both Cutthroat competitors like Jordan was but that's a about as close as you're going to get because jimmmy Butler isn't a freak athlete and neither was Kobe in fact Kobe was often praised for making the most of his abilities despite not being nearly the athlete Jordan was and amongst all of these players and attributes right now Anthony Edwards is probably right about here he acts like Jordan he's a freak athlete and he's really good but he doesn't really play all that much like Michael did there's definitely flashes of a young MJ in his game with his ability to play Above the Rim blow past Defenders with a lightning quick first step and of course the Mind melting posters but just like everyone else that came before him there are of course differences that separate Anthony Edwards from a young Michael Jordan with that being said these few differences aren't nearly enough to beat the allegations of similarities some people have mentioned that they never saw MJ play live but watching ant might be what it must have felt like fans that did watch MJ play testify that it was in fact just like this with a generation of Mega Stars entering the last stages of their careers fans of the NBA have been speculating who the new face of the league might be and there's a lot of great candidates maybe it's Tatum or Luca it was looking like it might be John Morant for a moment but the off court issues have stunted that option SGA put up a jordanes statline this year so maybe it's him yic has been the best player in the league for the last few years but I'm not sure if anyone would consider him the face of the NBA because being the face of the best basketball league in the world is about more than just being the best player in the league you need Charisma marketability you need to resonate with the masses you need to put together big moments and absurd highlights that Inspire even non-nba fans we want to know that you love the game just as much as we do commercials and endorsements candid and endearing interviews that connect with the fans a no excuse Workhorse mentality with a superhuman set of skills to contrast it Kobe Bryant only won one MVP in his 20year career but he was the face of the NBA for about a decade LeBron carried the torch for the majority of some of our lives and despite not being the best player in the world anymore he's still probably the face of the league Steph was as likable and relatable and inspiring as a superstar can get a very unexpected but revered face of the NBA for many years Anthony Edwards looks like he might just be the next player to grab the torch and lead the league into a new era the kids got the whole package his team loves him the league loves him the fans love him maybe because he ignites us inspires us and reminds us of why we all love the game but maybe it's also because he reminds us of a player who did all of those things years ago [Music]

Channel: JxmyHighroller

Views: 1,137,366

Keywords: LeBron James, House of Highlights, ESPN, NBA highlights, Jimmy Highroller, NBA trash talk, Buzzer Beaters, Ankle Breakers, NBA Championship, Rebound, Stephen Curry, Lakers, nba breaking news, Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembenyama, Michael Jordan, kobe bryant, kyrie, nba free agency, Giannis Antetokounmpo, NBA trade, Milwaukee Bucks, NBA Playoffs, Game Winner, Denver Nuggets, Boston Celtics, NBA championship, Game 7, Anthony Edwards, Michael Jordan comparison, Timberwolves

Id: DDtmOy1RfiA

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Tue May 14 2024