Michael Jordan crying with NBA trophy, overlaid with Meek Mill lyric 'I used to pray for times like this.'

I Used to Pray for Times Like This

2021reaction imageclassic

Published October 24, 2026

A 1991 photo of Michael Jordan sobbing into his first NBA Finals trophy got a second life on Twitter in September 2021, when users began pairing it with the opening lyric from Meek Mill's 'Dreams and Nightmares' intro. By late 2022, sports accounts and fan pages were using the image to react to anything from Rihanna music drops to a halfway decent Thursday Night Football game.

basketball memes reaction memes hip hop memes delayed virality memes celebrity reaction memes

Overview

I Used to Pray for Times Like This takes a 1991 Andrew D. Bernstein photo of Michael Jordan hugging the Larry O'Brien trophy and weeping, then stacks it with the opening line of Meek Mill's 2012 track 'Dreams and Nightmares'1. The payoff lands because Jordan's face reads as pure overwhelmed joy, so the lyric turns any small win into a championship moment. A typical post sits above a screenshot or news headline, with the image doing the emotional heavy lifting on its own3.

Variations swap Jordan for other athletes who have had their own cathartic trophy moments, with a LeBron James edit being one of the more widely shared alternates4. Sports accounts use it for game recaps, fans use it for album announcements, and the Meek Mill lyric is sometimes written over the image as a caption, sometimes just implied by posting the photo alone7.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter
Creator
@reactjpg
Date
2021

The source photo was shot by NBA photographer Andrew D. Bernstein on June 12, 1991, right after the Chicago Bulls beat the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 5 to clinch Jordan's first NBA title, with his father James at his side1. The 'Dreams and Nightmares (Intro)' song that supplies the caption was released by Meek Mill on his debut album in October 20122.

The earliest known post pairing the photo with the lyric came from Twitter user @reactjpg on September 30, 2021, who dropped the image with the line 'I used to pray for times like this' and nothing else5. The tweet picked up around 160 likes and 14 retweets over the following two years, which was modest, but the pairing itself seeded a template that other accounts picked up7.

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How It Spread

After the September 2021 origin post, the format drifted through Twitter sports and music fan circles for about a year before hitting wider recognition5. On October 20, 2022, the Facebook page NFL Memes used the image with the overlay 'When the Thursday Night game is actually exciting,' pulling it into mainstream football meme territory6.

Music Twitter latched on next. User @GimK_ posted the Jordan image on October 28, 2022 to react to a new Rihanna music announcement, and that tweet pulled over 3,700 likes and more than 750 retweets3. On January 8, 2023, user @gcindisguise reworked the format with a LeBron James crying photo and the same Meek Mill lyric, picking up close to 1,000 likes4.

By 2023, the pairing was documented on Know Your Meme and treated as a standard reaction image, with sports pages, music stans, and general meme accounts all using it for celebratory posts7.

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How to Use This Meme

Posters typically reply to good news with just the Jordan photo, trusting followers to supply the Meek Mill lyric in their heads. Common conventions include writing the full 'I used to pray for times like this' line as a quote tweet above the picture, overlaying the lyric onto the image as a macro, or swapping Jordan for another crying athlete when the subject calls for it4.

Frequently Asked Questions