"Here’s an experiment. Open your mouth and take a breath as fast as you can.
Now do the Jordan tongue. Repeat. If you’re like me, you can take in the same amount of air only a LOT faster. Keeping your tongue in your mouth might be natural but it’s also, if you think about it, sort of a partial obstruction to your windpipe. Sticking your tongue out gets it out of the way.
Oxygen is cellular fuel. If you take a bellows and blow air on a fire, it burns brighter, right? If you’re Michael Jordan and your job is to enter a low earth orbit on a regular basis, you’re going to need a dramatic lot of O2, quickly. I think that consciously or unconsciously, sticking his tongue out that far was his way to hyperoxygenate and turn regular air into a performance-enhancing drug.
I’m thinking calling it a “drug” might even have been not too far from the truth … people wonder about MJ’s almost insane drive to win. It may have been pure addiction to that hyperventilating altered state of consciousness. Look it up, it’s a real thing."
- Interestingly enough i kind of theorized the same thing this guy said about MJ. I assumed that a lot of athletes like MJ and Lebron superhuman feats come from having proper body and mouth structure which lets them take in more oxygen and be more athletic.