“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
— Michael Jordan, Motivational speech (featured in ESPN’s ‘The Last Dance’ documentary and multiple public appearances)
Michael Jordan is, by most measures, the greatest basketball player who ever lived. Six NBA championships, six Finals MVP awards, and a cultural legacy that reshaped the sport entirely. When someone of that stature speaks about failure, it carries a different weight than a motivational poster ever could.
What makes this quote so striking is its specificity. Jordan does not speak in vague abstractions about resilience or grit. He counts. Nine thousand missed shots. Nearly three hundred losses. Twenty-six game-winning attempts that did not go in. These are not metaphors. They are the actual ledger of a career that most people remember only for its triumphs.
The quote, featured prominently in ESPN’s documentary series ‘The Last Dance,’ lands differently in that context. Watching the footage of Jordan’s obsessive competitiveness, his fury at losing, and his relentless drive makes clear that these failures were not taken lightly. They stung. They were studied. And then they were used.
His final line, short and almost quiet after everything that precedes it, is the whole point: failure was not the obstacle. It was the method. For anyone who only sees the championships and the highlights, Jordan is offering a correction. The success was built on top of all that loss, not in spite of it.
