James Jordan always claimed that his son Larry had the real basketball talent in the family.

Deloris Jordan said their eldest son James Jr. (or Ronnie, as the family calls him) possesses the true leadership ability.

Jordan's oldest sister, Delois, now she was the creative one. And Roslyn was the writer.

The family's youngest boy was encouraged and appreciated too, but he was the one who would stand over the engine of the latest car his father and brothers were fixing, not wanting to get his hands greasy.

"I remember one time," said Larry, "my father told Michael, 'Go get my 9/16 wrench,' and Michael said, 'What's that?' And my father just sent him in: 'Go back inside with the women.' Michael was fine with that. It just wasn't in his DNA."

For a while, Michael Jordan's DNA was not so clear-cut.

At age 12, there was the day he was suspended from school for fighting. It wasn't the first time he had gotten into a fight in school, and his mother was darned sure she was not going to let the child lay around the house all day, watching TV.

"He tells me it would be considered child abuse today," Deloris said of her punishment, with a laugh. "But it was a tough age and I knew I had to set the precedent. I took him to work and made him stay in the car all day and read. I could see him from the bank window. I wanted him to know I was always watching him. We went to lunch, and then after dinner, I knew a lady at the library, so he stayed there and read some more. ...

"We didn't have any more trouble from him after that."

On the threshold of his enshrinement on Friday into the Basketball Hall of Fame, the man acknowledged by many as the greatest player in the history of the game may be remembered as a somewhat combative child. But Michael Jordan was also the most affectionate one in the family, the one who would wrap his arms around his mother while she was cooking and tell her how badly he wanted to be tall.

At 15 years old and a sophomore in high school, he was 5-foot-10 and watched as his best friend, LeRoy Smith, at 6-foot-4, was moved up to the varsity squad while he stayed behind.

"Mom, I really want to be tall," Michael would beg.

"Go put salt in your shoes and pray," his mother would tell him, the basis of the story that became a best-selling children's book, which she wrote with daughter Roslyn.

"He would tell me I was being silly, but I had to pacify him so I could finish dinner," she said with a laugh. "Then his dad would walk in and he'd tell him he wanted to be tall. We'd say, 'You have it in your heart. The tallness is within you. You can be as tall as you want to be in your thinking.'"

Fortunately for Michael, the North Carolina Tar Heels and the Chicago Bulls, the tallness would not restrict itself to his thinking, and he would grow 5 inches between his sophomore and junior years.

Until then, Larry Jordan (who is 5-foot-8 and 11 months older than Michael) enjoyed a competitive advantage over his younger brother. The two would often invent games in their vast backyard -- about five acres of land, and 13 acres beyond that owned by their mother and uncle.

"We had this barbecue pit that we'd use as the backstop and we'd play baseball with a tennis ball, and we had numerous battles," Larry recalled. "If I lost, I had to keep playing until I won. That's why, more often than not, it would end in a fight."

Michael competed in whichever sport was in season, playing quarterback and wide receiver in Pop Warner and through his freshman year of high school. The Jordan kids also had an older cousin who, at 6-foot-7, clearly shared Michael's tall genes and lived with the family briefly while he was in high school, working on basketball with the younger boys.

But the brothers' first love was baseball.

"I was the guy who would go for base hits and Michael would go for home runs," Larry said. "He always had that little glamour about him."

At 12, Michael was named MVP when he represented his team in a state tournament.

"For his prize, he got to go to Mickey Owens baseball camp," Larry said. "Then, when I was 13 and Michael was 12, our Little League baseball coach got us involved on our first organized basketball team."

But the one-on-one battles continued.

"I won most of them until he started to outgrow me," said Larry, "and then that was the end of that."

Still, Larry insisted there was no resentment as his little brother soared past him.

"We played one year of varsity basketball together when I was a senior and Michael was a junior, and that's when his play just went to another level," he said. "Even though there were five guys on the floor, he pretty much played all five positions. His level of play was just so much higher than the rest of us. People ask me all the time if it bothered me, but I can honestly say no, because I had the opportunity to see him grow. I knew how hard he worked."

Deloris and James made sure their kids attended each other's activities -- the girls going to their brothers' basketball games and the boys showing up at softball.

"That was a family rule," Larry said. "We had to go out and support each other, so there was never any jealousy on my part. I felt he earned everything. But I don't think he or anyone else had any vision that he would be the player he turned out to be. As a matter of fact, we thought he'd play baseball. That was his dream."