In an article for the Players’ Tribune, Zeller explains his awkward encounter with perhaps the greatest basketball player ever. After Zeller was selected, he was going to talk to three people — first was Rod Higgins (then president of basketball operations), then Rich Cho (general manager) and lastly, No. 23.
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Here’s what happened next, in Zeller’s own words.
Luckily for Zeller, he had other chances to talk to Jordan throughout his career. But at that moment he had to feel terrible.
Then he said “Alright, I’m going to pass the phone on to Rich…”
I froze. That meant it was Michael Jordan on the line. He had gone out of order. I scrambled to say, “Thank you Mr. Jordan” — or maybe I just said, “OK.” I have no idea. I had just rambled on for a minute to the best basketball player ever and I didn’t even know it was him.
Zeller also provided some other interesting inputs into what the draft process is like. He said one team “berated” him for 30 minutes straight to see if he could handle it. Another team wanted to see if he could come up with two answers for “what’s two and two?”
