Michael Jordan is easily one of the greatest basketball players of all-time, and according to most people, he is the best, without question. Jordan got to play during the 80s and 90s which were a simpler time for athletes as they didn't have to deal with the pitfalls of social media. For instance, a player such as LeBron James has to deal with everything the fans are saying, while also seeing everything he says become a huge story and narrative on Twitter.
During an interview with Cigar Aficionado, Jordan had an honest answer while speaking about the social media age and how he would have been able to handle it all. As he explains in the video below, athletes like Tiger Woods proved to him that Jordan wouldn't be the player he was in the 90s, if social media had existed at the time.
“Tiger [Woods] played at his peak somewhere toward the end of my career. Then, what changed from that time-frame to now is social media – Twitter and all those types of things," Jordan said. "And that has invaded the personalities and personal time of individuals. It’s to the point where some people have been able to utilize it to their financial gain and things of that nature. But for someone like myself – and this is what Tiger deals with – I don’t know if I could’ve survived in this Twitter [era], where you don’t have the privacy that you’d want and what seems to be very innocent can always be misinterpreted.”
This is an extremely honest assessment of himself, although we're sure Jordan would have been just as dominant, albeit just a tiny bit less focused. Either way, it would be fun to see prime Jordan competing against the likes of prime LeBron.