Michael Jordan has a long list of names.
The NBA legend might be the only person in the world with Chuck Daly and Xander Schauffele on the same personal winner’s list.
Air Jordan’s inner competitiveness has become one of his best-known trademarks.
How competitive was the six-time NBA champion?
Just ask Daly, who won back-to-back basketball world titles with the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons.
And Schauffele, who recently won the PGA Championship.
“He beat me straight up, which is embarrassing,” said Schauffele, in the days before the 2024 US Open at Pinehurst.
For years, Jordan’s Chicago Bulls couldn’t get past the Pistons with Daly as head coach.
That finally changed in 1991, when Jordan won his first world title after the Bulls swept Daly’s Detroit crew 4-0 in the Eastern Conference finals.
A year later, the greatest basketball team of all time was assembled for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.
Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Patrick Ewing and Jordan led an absolutely stacked squad.
Daly was the coach of the Dream Team.
Jordan had a ton of non-basketball hobbies, with golf near the top of the list.
In Barcelona, Air Jordan played the Pistons coach in golf … and lost by one stroke.
“Michael always had a little game going with everyone,” Daly said. “I ended up shooting a 78 and beat him one day.”
Knowing Jordan’s unrelenting competitiveness, Daly vowed to go out on top and never play the future GOAT ever again.
But Jordan wouldn’t relent.
The 14-time All-Star and 10-time scoring champion started knocking on Daly’s hotel room door at 4 a.m.
“When he beat me at golf, it was just like the Detroit Pistons beating the Bulls,” Jordan said. “That just ate at me because I didn’t think he was capable of beating me.
“So, yes, I wanted to play him. And the next available time, I got back at him.”
That was exactly why Daly had initially refused to ever play Jordan again.
The veteran coach knew that the NBA legend would want to play him over and over again on the golf course, until Jordan finally won and would be able to walk off as a winner.
While the Boston Celtics hold a 3-0 lead in the 2024 NBA Finals, Jordan is considered by many to be the greatest basketball player of all-time, with only LeBron James close to MJ.
Daly won two NBA championships with the Pistons and finished his career with a 638-437 record and .593 winning percentage.
He passed away in 2009.
In the golfing world, Jordan also had his way with Schauffele.
The 2024 PGA Championship winner was blown away by Air Jordan’s talent on the course and was a first-hand witness to the futility of trash talking versus a man who went a perfect 6-0 in the NBA Finals.
“It is fun,” said Schauffele, after acknowledging that he played Jordan in golf.
Then the real truth came out.
Schauffele tried to “s*** talk” Jordan and soon learned why Reggie Miller was badly burned when trying the same trick.
“He got all quiet, focused and then he birdied 15, 16, no strokes,” Schauffele said. “He beat me straight up.”
Tiger Woods could use some of MJ’s golfing magic after a rough first round at the 2024 US Open.