One day after practice, having notice Kwame palming yet another basketball in solitary amusment, Jordan palmed two balls, extending his arms to Kwame and shouting "Hey Kwame, you know what the difference is between you doing this and me doing this?" Brown looked stumped. Jordan laughed and yelled, "They pay me 35 million when I do it"

Jordan's infatuation with his protege waned. He thought Brown was cocky and disrespectful sometimes, particularly when the teenager nagged him about playing a one-on-one game, hinting that doom awaited him. Finally, Jordan agreed to the game, Brown grinning on the court, convinced his youth and height would be indefensible weapons against a shorter man twice his age. Early in the game, believing he had a lunging , jabbing Jordan off balance, the kid dared to say, "You reach, I'll teach." Jordan snapped "You teach and i'll knock you on your f*ckin @ss."

He proceeded to humiliate Brown, mocking him while scoring at will, declining to help him up when the teenager fell hard on the floor, winning lopsidedly and, at the end, yelling at Brown to acknowledge his superiority in front of the team: "You better call me 'Daddy', Motherf*cka"

"Michael was breaking him down" one observer recounted, "Probably to build him up, but there was a lot of breaking down."

Thing deteriorated quickly thereafter. Brown didn't work hard enough for Jordan's taste, and it did not help that many in the Wizards Organization, from officials to teammates, thought the kid showed no capacity for either accepting criticism or honoring an old basketball tenet that said rookies should play hard, accept bruises and complain about nothing.

With the criticism mounting and his playin getting worse, Brown became maddeningly frustrated, a kid convinced he was being repeatedly fouled in the intrasquad scrimmages by two veterans, Christian Laetner and Jahidi White, who weren't quick enough, Brown believed, to stay with him. He would drive toward the basket and feel himself bumped by a hard hip, sometimes losing the ball, infuriated that the referees wouldn't blow a whistle "That was a foul!" he finally groaned.

Play stopped. There was an electric silence. A wide-eyed Jordan walked towards him "You f*cking flamming f@ggot," Jordan exploded. "You don't get a foul call on a goddamn little touch foul, you f*cking f@ggot. You don't ever bring that f@ggoty sh!t here. Get your goddamn @ss back on the floor and play. I don't want to hear that f*cking sh!t out of you again. Get your @ss back and play, you f@ggot !!"

A stupified Brown could say nothing. He was close to tears witnesses said. "It was not a mortal wound" said a wizards offficial. But he also said that Jordan's words left brown numb for several days thereafter, observing that Brown appered to be increasingly tentative on the court.

Kwame later recalled the scrimmage "It was pretty rough, but that's Michael Jordan. You deal with it. You learn you're a rookie and you're not going to get calls...But sometimes I felt all alone out there, like I was surrounded by Sharks. "