‘I got teased so much’

Growing up in the ’90s, actor Michael B. Jordan, known back then simply as Michael Jordan, couldn’t escape references to a certain NBA star with the same name who was everywhere, from the court to the movies to the shoe store. Everyone wanted to “Be Like Mike” — the other one.

“I got teased so much, to the point where I almost changed my name,” the Sinners star recently told CBS Sunday Morning.

Looking back, Jordan said, he understood that it was being compared to the legendary athlete “was a part of the alchemy that made me who I am today. It definitely made me want to be competitive. I wanted to be great at something, if not for nothing else at that time, just to feel like I had my own identity.”

But it definitely wasn’t fun for the California native at the time.

The future star of TV’s Friday Night Lights and movies such as the Creed and Black Panther franchise had been named in honor of his father, but he weighed whether to use his middle name, Bakari.

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He resisted the change, of course, and continues to feel a connection to the NBA legend.

“I feel like I’m walking in that and will continue to do so, big time,” Jordan said. “We got a lot more things to do. We’re just getting started.”

One of Entertainment Weekly‘s Entertainers of the Year, Jordan has definitely distinguished himself by now.

Jordan was nominated in the category of Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture — Drama at the Golden Globes for his work playing twins Smoke and Stack in the rollicking vampire tale, but he lost to The Secret Agent’s Wagner Moura.

Overall, Sinners was nominated for seven Golden Globes and won two, for Best Original Score and Cinematic Achievement.

Sinners is now streaming on multiple platforms, including HBO Max and Prime Video,

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