We know Michael Jordan is hoops royalty, but how would MJ fare in a track meet? Apparently pretty well. The 6’6” Jordan always had a smoothness about him on the hardwood, attacking the rim at will with his long, fluid strides. UNC coach Roy Williams, an assistant under Dean Smith throughout Jordan’s three-year Chapel Hill tenure, claims MJ could scoot with the best of them, telling Fox Sports’ Colin Cowherd he once witnessed his Airness blaze a 4.38 in the forty-yard dash.
“The day before practice started I always got everybody’s height, their reach, their vertical jump and then we went outside and we did the forty-yard dash,” said the long-tenured Tar Heels head coach. “He crossed the line and I looked and I said, ‘Wow, Coach [Bill] Guthridge, what’d you get?’ And he looked at me and [athletic trainer] Marc Davis said, ‘I got 4.39.’ And coach Guthridge said, ‘I got 4.38,’ and I said ‘I did too.’”
Wondering if they had made a mistake, Williams asked Jordan if he could run it again, to which the future Hall of Famer responded, “Too fast for you, huh?” Jordan’s next forty clocked in at a “low 4.4.” Both times were improvements on the estimated 4.5 Jordan ran as a freshman. The Bulls guard also shot up an inch and a half, growing from 6’4.5” to his sophomore height of 6’6.”
According to James Dator, who delved into the subject further in an article for SB Nation, only four NFL hopefuls topped Jordan’s reported 4.38 at the Scouting Combine in Indianapolis this past February. Taller players are usually at a disadvantage in shorter sprints—Dator notes A.J. Green (6’4”) and Mike Evans (6’5”) both struggled for that exact reason—but the added height seemed to have the opposite effect on No. 23. MJ was largely out of his element during his brief minor-league baseball stint in 1994 (.202 AVG with three homers, 51 RBI, 114 strikeouts and 11 errors in 127 games for Double-A Birmingham), but Jordan’s exceptional speed turned out to be his saving grace. For all his struggles that year, only four players in the Southern League swiped more bags than Jordan (30), who was 31 at the time.
There’s reason to be skeptical of Jordan’s 4.38. No video exists and Williams read Jordan’s time off a stop watch, creating at least some margin for error. But given his stratospheric athletic accomplishments, is it really that hard to fathom a 20-year-old Jordan running a faster forty than Julio Jones (4.39) and Saquon Barkley (4.40)?
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