The late David Halberstam was a wonderful writer and one of my favorites was his book "Playing For Keeps." There were several passages in the book that outlined the very reason why Michael Jordan was not just a great player but a dominate player. From time to time this summer I'm going to share some of those passages beginning with this one: "Hale noticed another thing about Jordan. Even in pickup games, he had become unusually purposeful. There was a tendency in games like this, when there were no coaches around for player to resort to what they did best, to reinforce their strengths and avoid going to any part of their game that was essentially weak. But Jordan, Hale believed, was constantly working on the weaker part of his game, trying to bring it up. It was, Hale thought, one more sign of his desire to be the best."
