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Growing up in the ’90s, actor Michael B. Jordan<\/a>, known back then simply as Michael Jordan, couldn’t escape references to a certain NBA star with the same name who was everywhere<\/em>, from the court to the movies to the shoe store. Everyone wanted to “Be Like Mike” \u2014 the other one.<\/p>\n “I got teased so much, to the point where I almost changed my name,” the Sinners<\/em> star recently told CBS Sunday Morning.<\/em><\/p>\n 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.”<\/p>\n But it definitely wasn’t fun for the California native at the time.<\/p>\n The future star of TV’s Friday Night Lights <\/em>and movies such as the Creed <\/em>and Black Panther <\/em>franchise had been named in honor of his father, but he weighed whether to use his middle name, Bakari.<\/p>\n Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n He resisted the change, of course, and continues to feel a connection to the NBA legend.<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n One of Entertainment Weekly<\/em>‘s Entertainers of the Year<\/a>, Jordan has definitely distinguished himself by now.<\/p>\n Jordan was nominated in the category of Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture \u2014 Drama at the Golden Globes<\/a> for his work playing twins Smoke and Stack in the rollicking vampire tale, but he lost to The Secret Agent’<\/em>s Wagner Moura.<\/p>\n