Which Leroy Smith was in Springfield?

I had another question about Michael Jordan's Hall of Fame speech and maybe others are also confused.

One of the many people Jordan credited for motivating him to be great was Leroy Smith, his teammate at Laney High School in Wilmington, N.C. Jordan mentioned that Smith was at last Friday's ceremony in Springfield, Mass.

This made me wonder if there's a real Leroy Smith or was he talking about the fictional character portrayed by Charlie Murphy, Eddie's older brother? Anyone who watched NBA TV this summer would have seen the mock commercials for Leroy Smith, "The Michael Jordan of motivating Michael Jordan." They are pretty funny, although the music video, "My Gift to the Game," is no "Party All the Time."

Apparently, the pretend Leroy Smith is the next Nike ad campaign. I even saw a Leroy Smith billboard in Gurnee this summer.

Of course, there is also a real Leroy Smith, who was Jordan's best friend in high school. When they were sophomores, Smith played varsity and Jordan didn't, a snub that seems to have stuck with Jordan the next three decades.

The Laney coaches have insisted Jordan was never cut from varsity. That year, the team had too many guards and too few big men. Since Smith was 6-foot-6, he was promoted. Jordan played guard full-time for the JV.

Jordan must have told the story of Smith to a Nike creative team and an ad campaign was launched. Here’s the Web site:

Get Your Basketball On

Jordan speech stands up
After watching Jordan's speech a second time, I still believe it's wrong to characterize his words as petty or mean-spirited. Jordan talked about the things that motivated him during his career and he prefaced each chapter with nice words for most everyone he mentioned, even Jerry Krause.

My only complaint was discussing the "organizations win championships" controversy, which ran it's course about 10 year ago. And I'm also trying to figure out what George Gervin had to do with the 1985 all-star game "freeze-out." Gervin was on the other team, did he guard Jordan too aggressively or what?