Where does ‘MJ of Delaware’ come from?

“The Michael Jordan of Delaware” moniker attached to new Milwaukee Bucks draft pick Donte DiVincenzo wasn’t something that started during his high school days in Delaware, though he did win two state titles and became unquestionably the state’s best player at the time.

The reference is far more recent, perhaps as recently as early 2017, and comes from Villanova head coach Jay Wright, who jokingly coined it as a nod to his Delaware legacy.

Kevin Noonan of Town Square Delaware wrote a full breakdown of the moniker in March of this year.

“So, here is the genesis of that case of mistaken identity: Villanova coach Jay Wright has weekly television and radio shows, like most bigtime college coaches. Every week, Wright has a segment on a different player and when the DiVincenzo episode came on, Wright off-handedly remarked that Donte was known back home as ‘The Michael Jordan of Delaware.’ ”

Wright was quoted in January 2017 in a Delaware Online article using the reference.

Noonan said the humorous hyperbole took off thereafter, getting used by broadcasters and writers even though another popular nickname, “The Big Ragu,” latched on, too. That moniker was coined by Bucks and national broadcaster Gus Johnson, a nod to DiVincenzo’s red hair and Italian name.

“Actually, the player who probably deserves that title the most – and, of course, no player from Delaware has ever come close to deserving it — was Terrence Stansbury, the former Newark High All-Stater and Temple University All-American,” Noonan wrote of the Jordan reference. Stansbury reached the finals of the 1985 Slam Dunk competition in the NBA, beating Jordan along the way.

Wright has said he doesn’t remember coining the phrase.

“He said I said it to him facetiously in his freshman year when he was acting like a superstar,” Wright said in an article published by Mike Williams of the IUPUI Sports Capital Journalism program. “And I said to him, ‘You act like you’re the Michael Jordan of Delaware.’ I don’t remember saying that. … So, then I thought that the players started repeating it. I thought they called him that. So, I started saying it. That became his name.”