You can be the greatest basketball player of all time, you can have six NBA championship rings, you can be an iconic talent that transcends generations, you can casually double-fist cigars in your free time -- and even all those credentials won't save you from a cocky teen under the influence of the Internet.
None other than Michael Jordan learned this at a recent basketball camp, when one kid tried to reach deep into the ol' bag of memes to humiliate Jordan in front of other youngsters.
But -- just like Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Gary Payton and company did in the '90s -- this youth learned that if you come at His Airness, you best not miss.
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Below is the moment, which was posted to Twitter on Monday night. We see the 52-year-old Jordan standing before scores of seated campers, most of them appearing to regard the GOAT with proper reverence. We see one camp stand and tell Jordan he has just "one question for you." Then -- it happens. The kid points at Jordan's footwear. He practically bellows: "What are thooooooose!?" The other kids erupt in laughter.
pic.twitter.com/1375oehvwZ— Bryce Lyle (@BryceLyle1) August 4, 2015
Oh my! But maybe you're unfamiliar with the meme in question -- this is, like, a Level Two meme, which exists on a deeper and more obscure plane than your garden variety Level One meme.
"What are those" is a query posed to people perceived to be wearing substandard footwear. Here's an example:
Not even cops are safe! Just look:
Jordan famously said in 2013 that's he's "not a Twitterer, not a twerker." A photo of him crying at his Hall of Fame induction speech in 2009 is already a meme. And no 50-something man wants to be humiliated by a cocky kid; that's middle-aged nightmare fuel.
Considering all that, you might think Jordan the man would react to the burn much like like Jordan the meme:
But come on -- this is Michael Jordan we're talking about! Michael Freaking Jordan. He's not just gonna take some mess from some punk kid.
The snippet embedded above paints one picture. The full video, embedded below, paints another. In the full version, we see the kid deliver his "What are thooooose?" line. We see the other kids laugh. We see Jordan initially react with confusion -- this is a 52-year-old man engaging with some Internet #content IRL, after all; there's going to be befuddlement.
Then we see Jordan strike back.
After his brief confusion, and after appearing to get the lowdown from another adult, Jordan first admits "I'm lost in that Vine stuff, man."
Then he goes in for the kill.
"What are those?" Jordan asks rhetorically. "These are 29 lows."
He's referring, for the uninitiated, to the low-top model of the Air Jordan XX9 -- a shoe that bears his name and logo, contributes toward his billion dollar net worth and hasn't even been released yet.
Son, you just got moated!
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Jordan played it cool externally, but you know he was doing something like this inside:
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Still, the classic "What The F*** is Michael Jordan Wearing" Tumblr page does leave a lot of unanswered questions.