LT: No one more ‘competitive’ than His Airness

LAWRENCE Taylor knows firsthand that his friend Michael Jordan isn’t any different on the golf course than he is on the basketball court.

“Of all the people I know, he’s probably the most competitive person I know,” Taylor told The Post. “He’ll bet on a daggone 50-foot putt and goddammit, if he bets on it, nine times out of 10 he’s gonna make it.”

Jordan is not averse to joking around on the links.

“Don’t get it confused,” Taylor said. “He is trying to win every bet. He might not care, but he is trying to win

bet. Everything that is out there. He’s trying to win at all times. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

The Giants drafted LT out of North Carolina in 1981. Jordan was getting ready to play his freshman year for Dean Smith. And that’s where a friendship began to blossom between the Greatest Defensive Player in NFL history and the Greatest NBA Player in history ... with a basketball.

“My senior year when I went to the Giants, I came back to school to finish up that summer,” Taylor said. “And he was there at Carolina getting ready for the season, but we played a lot of basketball, we hung out a lot. I consider him a good friend.”

No one, of course, could have predicted what Jordan would become.

“I am not a critiquer of basketball. I played football,” Taylor said. “The guy was phenomenal. And sometimes you think he’s from another planet. The things he can do you don’t see every day. Every hundred million people that are born, there may be one like him, OK?”

Asked what he thinks made Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan,

Taylor said: “That’s a question that a lot of guys, a lot of good athletes, a lot of great athletes, they look at a Michael Jordan and they wonder, ‘What’s his edge? What did he have that other people don’t have?’

“And at the end of the day, you gotta say, ‘Everything.’ ”

In “The Last Dance” documentary, it was revealing how Jordan used any slight, real or imagined, to fuel him. Bill Parcells would from time to time rile up Taylor. For example, before a game with Tampa Bay, Parcells would reference Hugh Green, drafted seventh and five slots behind LT, with: “That’s the kind of linebacker I’d want on my team.”

Taylor now says that gameday was all the motivation he needed.

“At the end of the day, I’m trying to win,” Taylor said. “I don’t give a s--t what you said, you just gotta prove it that day. I don’t need to talk about him or try to hype him up.”

Jordan probably didn’t either.

“He is one of the best if not best ... he is best that has ever played the game,” LT said. “And like I said, most of the time you’re thinking this guy can’t be from the planet Earth, he’s gotta be from somewhere else.”

Taylor’s opponents — especially quarterbacks — would likely compare LT’s mentality to Jordan’s.

“To a point. Everything is to a point,” Taylor said. “I think we respect the game that we played. We work hard at what we do. We want to be considered the best at what we do.

“But at no time do I put my accolades in football and compare them to the accolades that he has in basketball.”