Don't meet your heroes. The old adage holds true for Jerry Stackhouse, who said on the Adrian Wojnarowski's "The Woj Pod" on Wednesday that he wishes he never played in Washington with Michael Jordan.
On the surface, it seems like the opportunity to play with Jordan would be a dream come true for just about anyone. Even more so for a guy like Jerry Stackhouse since he played college ball at North Carolina, just like Jordan.
But Stackhouse's first year with the Wizards was also Jordan's last year in the league. Jordan was 39-years-old and he clearly wasn't the same player as he was in the '90s.
"It was really challenging to be able to be in a situation with an idol, who at this particular point, I felt like I was a better player," said Stackhouse in The Woj Pod.
Sure, MJ was still scoring 20 points a night in his final year with the Wizards, but Stackhouse was starting to really make a name for himself in the league. Just two years prior he was an All-Star and averaged 29.8 PPG and 5.1 APG with the Pistons. In any other situation he would've been the focal point of the offense.
"Things were still being run through Michael Jordan," Stackhouse said on The Woj Pod. "He wanted to get a little more isolations on the post, of course, so we had more isolations for him on the post. And it just kind of spiraled in a way that where I didn't enjoy that season at all."
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It becomes easier to understand Stackhouse's frustration when you consider that he had been traded from Detroit to Washington in the offseason. The Pistons built on their growing success and reached the Conference Finals in 2003. The Wizards, on the other hand, went 37-45 and missed the playoffs.
"Kind of the picture I had in my mind of Michael Jordan and the reverence I had for him, I lost a little bit of it during the course of that year."
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