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Why Klay Thompson's dad, Mychal, joked about inspiring Michael Jordan

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Warriors star shooting guard Klay Thompson idolized the late legend Kobe Bryant while growing up.

Kobe, of course, drew inspiration from -- and modeled his game after -- the one and only Michael Jordan.

And MJ wanted to be just like ...

... Klay's dad, Mychal? 

Well, not exactly.

But over the weekend, ESPN's Ramona Shelburne tweeted an interesting anecdote: "Andy Thompson, NBAE Producer who shot Bulls 98, first met MJ in 91. Apparently MJ loved that Andy’s brother, Mychal Thompson, changed the spelling of his name. MJ was 10 & tried writing his name that way. Mychal Jordan! Until his mom put the kibosh on it."

Here is how Mychal responded when sports broadcaster Spero Dedes tweeted a message at him relating to the above story:

Mychal wasn't done having fun:

Good stuff.

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But we need to quickly circle back to more important matters.

What if Jordan's mother, Deloris, allowed her son to go by "Mychal?!" That's got to be the biggest what-if in NBA history, right?

Just kidding, of course. But it's very safe to assume there would be way more Mychal's walking around in the world if 10-year old Michael got his wish.

[RELATED: Watch 12 shots from Steph's career that ruined basketball]

One final tangent -- when Jordan and the Chicago Bulls won the 1991 NBA title, Mychal was a backup big man on the Los Angeles Lakers.

The No. 1 overall pick in the 1978 NBA Draft played a total of 10 minutes in the five-game NBA Finals series -- all in Game 2.

Those were the final minutes of his career as the 36-year-old retired that summer when Klay was about a year-and-a-half old.

One final final tangent -- Klay's older brother is Mychel (same sound as "Michael" and "Mychal"), and he played for the G League's Santa Cruz Warriors from 2013 to 2017.

OK. No more tangents.

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