He's got such potential. I used to really look up to him
Not Michael Jordan — invented by a satire siteDunning-Kruger-Times.com, an ‘America’s Last Line of Defense’ satire sitePublished 11 November 2023 · network owned by Christopher Blair
Michael Jordan never said this. Snopes ↗ traced the sentence to a satirical article posted on Dunning-Kruger-Times.com on 11 November 2023 — a site whose own About Us page declares “Everything on this website is fiction” — and rated the claim Labeled Satire on 13 November 2023. The words are dialogue written for a fictional phone call, not a quotation from Jordan.
“He's got such potential. I used to really look up to him” Not Michael Jordan. The line was written for a satirical article published on Dunning-Kruger-Times.com on 11 November 2023, part of the “America’s Last Line of Defense” network; Snopes rated the claim “Labeled Satire” on 13 November 2023.
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Michael Jordan. Use the credit shown above instead.
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Dunning-Kruger-Times.com. Theme: "He's got such potential. I used to really look up to him". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "He's got such potential. I used to really look up to him". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The source
Claimed speaker
Michael Jordan
Actual origin
“Michael Jordan Says He’d Like to ‘Slap Some Sense’ Into Colin Kaepernick”
Published
Dunning-Kruger-Times.com, 11 November 2023
Verdict
Fabricated satire — Snopes, 13 November 2023, rated “Labeled Satire”
“He’s got such potential,” Jordan said during a very emotional phone call with ALLOD’ Tara Newhole, “I used to really look up to him.”
Fiction
As transcribed by Snopes ↗ from the originating satirical article. The phone call and the interviewer are part of the invention — the publisher’s own About Us page states that “Everything on this website is fiction.” What circulates online is the two sentences with the framing stripped away, which is precisely what makes them read as a real quotation.
Snopes ↗, in a fact-check published 13 November 2023 by Taija PerryCook, rated the claim Labeled Satire and traced it to an article posted on Dunning-Kruger-Times.com on 11 November 2023, reproducing the line in full.
Dunning-Kruger-Times describes itself on its own About Us page ↗ as “a subsidiary of the ‘America’s Last Line of Defense’ network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery,” and states plainly: “Everything on this website is fiction.”
Jordan’s only documented comment on anthem protests points the other way. In a statement to the Charlotte Observer reported by CNN ↗ on 25 September 2017, he said those who peacefully express themselves “should not be demonized or ostracized.”
The sentence appears nowhere among the sourced quotations on Wikiquote’s Michael Jordan page ↗, which carries no misattributed or disputed section at all; a search of Quote Investigator returns no entry for it either.
The wording is not Jordan’s and it is not old: it was written for a web article first published on 11 November 2023, and Dunning-Kruger-Times.com asserts copyright in the name of its owner, Christopher Blair, at the foot of its About Us page ↗. As a 2023 publication by an identifiable publisher the text is in copyright; nothing about this sentence is public domain.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
A fake built for the share button
This is not a garbled version of something real. It is dialogue invented for a satirical news story, stripped of its framing and passed around as though Jordan had actually said it.
✕
The two sentencesMichael Jordan The claim
Snopes ↗ rated the claim Labeled Satire and reproduced the line from the originating article; Jordan is not on record saying it anywhere.
✕
The wider story — that Jordan wanted to ‘slap some sense’ into Colin KaepernickMichael Jordan Contradicted
Jordan publicly backed athletes who knelt, telling the Charlotte Observer in a statement reported by CNN ↗ on 25 September 2017 that those who peacefully express themselves “should not be demonized or ostracized.”
✕
The interview it supposedly came from‘Tara Newhole’ of ALLOD Invented
The interviewer and the “very emotional phone call” exist only inside the satirical article; the publisher’s About Us page ↗ states that “Everything on this website is fiction.”
✓The only people who ever said these words are satirists writing in Michael Jordan’s voice, in a story Snopes rated ‘Labeled Satire’ ↗ two days after it appeared.
Context
Fake quotes fill silences
Fabricated quotations work best where there is a vacuum, and Michael Jordan spent decades making one. CNN ↗ noted in 2017 that he had “famously refused to take stances on anything political” until July 2016, so an invented Jordan opinion on kneeling NFL players reads, to someone scrolling past, like the scoop it is pretending to be.
The tell is inside the sentence itself. Jordan was born in 1963 and his NBA career ended in 2003; Colin Kaepernick was born in 1987 and played in the NFL from 2011 to 2016. “I used to really look up to him” is not a line the older, long-retired, far more famous man plausibly delivers about the younger one — it was written for effect, and it is the half of the story that survives once the satire label falls off.
Everything on this website is fiction.
More on the network that made it
Dunning-Kruger-Times.com is one of the sites in the “America’s Last Line of Defense” network, whose About Us page ↗ is signed “~Christopher Blair, AKA Busta Troll” and describes the network’s mission as showing its credulous readership “the light, through shame if necessary.” The disclaimer is public and unambiguous; it simply does not travel with the screenshot.
Snopes ↗ recorded that the Facebook post carrying the story had drawn 836 likes and 278 comments at the time of writing — a modest number that still illustrates the pattern: the article is shared, the quotation is lifted out of it, and the quotation outlives every link back to the source that would have flagged it as fiction.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Born 17 February 1963 · Six-time NBA champion and former owner of the Charlotte Hornets
Michael Jordan won six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls across three stints between 1984 and 2003, and later owned the Charlotte Hornets. He is a magnet for invented political quotations precisely because he says so little in that register — CNN observed in 2017 that Jordan had “famously refused to take stances on anything political” until he condemned police killings of African-Americans in July 2016. When he finally did address anthem protests, in September 2017, he defended the players’ right to kneel — the opposite of what this fabricated line has him saying.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Documented origin
Taija PerryCook, “Did Michael Jordan Say He’d Like To ‘Slap Some Sense’ into Colin Kaepernick?” Snopes, 13 November 2023, rated “Labeled Satire” — tracing the wording to a satirical article published on Dunning-Kruger-Times.com, 11 November 2023.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘He's got such potential. I used to really look up to him’?” Last verified 17 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/hes-got-such-potential-i-used-to-really-look-up-to-him/