When Michael Jordan first got to UNC, we were sitting at the track one day after conditioning. It was just the two of us. “Coach,” he said. “I want to be the best player to every play here.”
“You’ll have to work much harder than you did in high school,” Williams said.
“But, Coach. I worked as hard as everybody else.”
“Oh, excuse me. I thought you just said you wanted to be the best player to ever play here. Working as hard as everybody else is not even going to come close, son.”
That was the end of the conversation.
Two days later, after the next conditioning session, Michael comes up to me and we were sitting there alone again. He said, “Coach, I’ve been thinking about what you said. I’m going to show you. There will never be anyone who will outwork me.”
He did that. From that day on, Michael tried to kick everybody’s rear end in every drill.
From "Hard Work: A Life On and Off the Court" by Roy Williams
