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Michael Jordan Biography

Born: February 17, 1963 Brooklyn, New York African American basketball player

Basketball superstar Michael Jordan is one of the most successful, popular, and wealthy athletes in college, Olympic, and professional sports history.

Michael Jordan was born on February 17, 1963, in Brooklyn, New York, one of James and Deloris Jordan's five children. The family moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, when Michael was very young. His father worked as a General Electric plant supervisor, and his mother worked at a bank. His father taught him to work hard and not to be tempted by street life. His mother taught him to sew, clean, and do laundry. Jordan loved sports but failed to make his high school basketball team as a sophomore. He continued to practice and made the team the next year. After high school he accepted a basketball scholarship to the University of North Carolina, where he played under head coach Dean Smith.

In Jordan's first season at North Carolina he was named Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Rookie of the Year for 1982. The team won the ACC championship, and Jordan made the clutch jump shot that beat Georgetown University for the championship of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Jordan led the ACC in scoring as a sophomore and as a junior. The Sporting News named him college player of the year for both years. He left North Carolina after his junior year and was selected by the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association (NBA) as the third pick of the 1984 draft. Before joining the Bulls, Jordan was a member of the Summer 1984 United States Olympic basketball team that won the gold medal in Los Angeles, California.

Early pro years

When Jordan was drafted by the Chicago Bulls they were a losing team, drawing only around six thousand fans to home games. Jordan quickly turned that around. His style of play and fierce spirit of competition reminded sportswriters and fans of Julius Erving (1950–), who had been a superstar player during the 1970s. Jordan's incredible leaping ability and hang time thrilled fans in arenas around the league. In his first season he was named to the All-Star team and was later honored as the league's Rookie of the Year.

By adding such players as Scottie Pippen, Bill Cartwright, Horace Grant, and John Paxson around Jordan, the Bulls' management created a strong team that won the 1991 NBA title by defeating the Los Angeles Lakers. The next year, the Bulls repeated as NBA champions by beating the Portland Trail Blazers. In 1992 Jordan also played on the "Dream Team," which participated in the Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. The Olympic Committee had voted to lift the ban on professional athletes participating in the games. The team easily won the gold medal, winning their eight games by an average margin of 43.7 points.

Unexpected retirement

In 1993, after a tough playoff series with the New York Knicks, the Bulls met the Phoenix Suns for the NBA championship. When it was over, Jordan was again playoff MVP, and Chicago had won a third straight title. That summer Jordan's father, James, was murdered by two men during a robbery attempt. Jordan was grief stricken, and his father's death, combined with media reports about his gambling, led him to announce his retirement from professional basketball in October. Jordan had won three straight NBA titles, three regular season MVP awards, three playoff MVP titles, seven consecutive scoring titles, and he was a member of the All-Star team every year that he was in the league. In just nine seasons he had become the Bulls all-time leading scorer.

In 1994–95 Jordan played for the Birmingham Barons, a minor league baseball team in the Chicago White Sox system. Although the seventeen-month experiment showed that he was not a major league baseball player, the experience and time away from basketball provided a much-needed rest and opportunity to regain his love of basketball.

Return to glory

When Jordan returned to the Chicago Bulls during the 1994–95 regular season, people wondered, "Could he do it again?" He played well, but he was obviously rusty. The Bulls were defeated in the playoffs by the Orlando Magic. After a summer of playing basketball during breaks from filming the live-action cartoon movie Space Jam, Jordan returned with a fierce determination to prove that he had the ability to get back on top. The 1995–96 Bulls finished the regular season 72–10, an NBA record for most wins in a season, and Jordan, with his shooting rhythm back, earned his eighth scoring title. He also became the tenth NBA player to score 25,000 career points and second fastest after Chamberlain to reach that mark. The Bulls went on to win their fourth NBA championship, overpowering the Seattle Supersonics in six games. Few who watched will ever forget how Jordan sank to his knees, head bent over the winning ball, in a moment of bittersweet victory and deep sadness. The game had been played on Father's Day, three years after his father's murder.

The defending champions had a tougher time during the 1996–97 season but entered the playoffs as expected. Sheer determination took the Bulls to their fifth NBA championship. Illness, injury, and at times a lack of concentration hurt the team. In the fifth game of the finals Jordan carried the team to victory despite suffering from a stomach virus. In the 1997–98 season the Bulls were again in the playoffs, and again they faced tough competition. As before, they were able to clinch the NBA championship, and Jordan claimed his sixth NBA finals MVP award.

Jordan's other professional life as a businessman was never off track. Profitable endorsements (ads in which he voiced his support for certain products) for companies such as Nike and Wheaties, as well as his own golf company and products such as Michael Jordan cologne (which reportedly sold 1.5 million bottles in its first two months), made Jordan a multimillionaire. In 1997 he was ranked the world's highest paid athlete, with a $30 million contract—the largest one-year salary in sports history—and approximately $40 million a year in endorsement fees.

Retired again

Jordan retired for a second time in 1999, ending his career on a high note just after the official end of a labor dispute between NBA players and team owners. Many people saw him as the greatest basketball player ever, and his retirement was called the end of an era. In 2000 Jordan became part-owner and president of basketball operations of the Washington Wizards. This made him only the third African American owner in the NBA. He also gained an ownership stake in the Washington Capitals hockey team. Also in 2000, Jordan celebrated the first year of his $1 million grant program to help teachers make a difference in their schools.

In September 2001, after months of rumors, Jordan announced that he was ending his three-year retirement to play for the Wizards at age thirty-eight. At a news conference to discuss his comeback, he said, "Physically, I know I'm not twenty-five years old, but I feel I can play the game of basketball on the highest level." The Wizards, who had won only nineteen games the season before, improved with the addition of Jordan. After being voted to play in his thirteenth All-Star game (during which he missed a slam dunk), Jordan had the Wizards in the race for the playoffs until suffering a knee injury and missing the last part of the season. He was also distracted in January 2002 when his wife Juanita, whom he married in 1989, filed for divorce. (They have three children.) The next month the divorce was called off. Jordan said he planned to play one more season for the Wizards.

For More Information

Greene, Bob. Hang Time. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

Gutman, Bill. Michael Jordan: A Biography. New York: Pocket Books, 1991.

Halberstam, David. Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made. New York: Random House, 1999.

Jordan, Michael. For the Love of the Game: My Story. New York: Crown Publishers, 1998.

Naughton, Jim. Taking to the Air: The Rise of Michael Jordan. New York: Warner Books, 1992.

Smith, Sam. The Jordan Rules. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992.

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Michael JORDAN

Michael Jordan is considered by most experts to be the greatest basketball player of all-time. He played collegiately at the University of North Carolina, where he helped that team win an NCAA championship in 1982 and also won gold at the Pan American Games in the same year. In 1984, Jordan led the United States to an Olympic gold medal. Turning to professional basketball after his junior year in college, he became the greatest player in the NBA (National Basketball Association). In 1991, Jordan finally achieved his greatest thrill, leading the Chicago Bulls to an NBA Championship, and completing his Triple Crown of titles – NCAA, NBA, and Olympic. Jordan eventually led the Bulls to six NBA titles (1991-1993, 1996-1998). In 1992, Jordan also played on the Dream Team which won the basketball gold medal at Barcelona. He could also have played in 1996 but chose not to do so. Jordan retired briefly at the beginning of the 1993-94 NBA season, taking a short fling at playing minor league baseball, but returned to basketball at the end of the 1995 season. He retired again after helping the Chicago Bulls win their sixth NBA title in the spring of 1998. However, Jordan came out of retirement to play for the Washington Wizards in the 2001-03 NBA seasons.

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How Michael Jordan became great: 'Nobody will ever work as hard as I work'

In 1982, Michael Jordan was just a teenager — he wasn't even yet the best player on his University of North Carolina basketball team. He still had to write home to his mother asking for stamps and spending money.

Yet Jordan made it known to those around him that he had lofty ambitions, and that he would complement his desire to be great by working hard and always learning how to get better, according to the first installments of ESPN's 10-part documentary "The Last Dance."

While the focus of the documentary series is on the Bulls' 1997-1998 season, in which Jordan and his teammates captured their sixth NBA championship, the first episode also examines Jordan's earliest days as a public figure, starting with his freshman college season. 

When he arrived at UNC, the expectations around Jordan were not befitting a player who would go on to reach the Hall of Fame and one day boast an estimated net worth of $2.1 billion . In fact, legendary UNC head coach Dean Smith said in one interview included in the documentary that Jordan was "inconsistent as a freshman," but the teenager's work ethic still stood out.

"He was one of the most competitive [players] we've ever had in our drills," Smith said. "He wanted to get better and then he had the ability to get better."

As a freshman, Jordan told UNC assistant coach Roy Williams (who is now UNC's head basketball coach) that he wanted to be the best basketball player ever to play at UNC — a school that had already won one NCAA championship, and nearly two dozen conference championships, before Jordan's arrival. Williams says in the documentary that he told the young Jordan that he would have to work even harder than he had in high school in order to accomplish that goal. ( Jordan famously did not make his high school's varsity basketball team until his junior year, after he finally hit a growth spurt.)

Jordan responded by telling Williams he'd worked as hard as anyone else on his high school team, Williams says.

"I told him, 'Excuse me. I thought you just told me you wanted to be the best player to ever play here,'" Williams says he told the teenaged Jordan, who responded with an intense promise.

"'I'm going to show you. Nobody will ever work as hard as I work,'" Williams says Jordan told him.

From there, Williams tells ESPN he spent the next "three years watching that youngster get better and better and better."

Williams was amazed at Jordan's ability to maintain an intense work ethic and strong desire to learn and become a better player throughout his career. 

"He never freaking turned it off," Williams says.

Indeed, Jordan's UNC teammates can confirm that the freshman player worked intensely to get better and better on the court, including continuing to practice after the rest of his teammates were ready to head home, according to former UNC teammate James Worthy.

"After about 2.5 hours of hard practice, I'm walking off the floor, like, drenched [in] sweat, tired. And, here comes Michael pushing me back on the floor, wanting to play a little one-on-one, wanting to see where his game was," says Worthy of Jordan. 

It's no coincidence that Jordan would challenge Worthy, specifically, to extra work on the court. A junior when Jordan was a freshman, Worthy was UNC's best player in 1982 and would help lead the team to a national championship on his way to becoming the first overall pick of the 1982 NBA Draft. 

"He wanted to learn, he wanted to grow quickly," Worthy says in the documentary of Jordan's rabid desire to improve his basketball skills as a freshman. "From month to month, from game to game, he was soaking up information. Once he got something and added it to the raw talent that he already had, it was really exposive to see."

Another former UNC teammate, Matt Doherty, echoed that sentiment in a recent interview . All of the UNC players respected Jordan, Doherty said, because while he was extremely talented, he was also "a sponge, he listened, he learned and he competed."

And Jordan definitely got better as his freshman season went on. Worthy, who went on to have a Hall of Fame career himself, jokes in the documentary that he started their season at UNC together as the better player, but that didn't last long.

"I was better than he was ... for about two weeks," Worthy says of Jordan.

By the end of his freshman season, Jordan "was a great player," Worthy says. 

In fact, by the end of the season, Jordan had learned enough and improved his basketball skills to the point where he was comfortable stepping into the national spotlight. When UNC made it to the NCAA's 1982 national championship game against powerhouse Georgetown, Jordan calmly sank the game-winning shot with time expiring on the game clock.

"I was young, but I had no time to be nervous," Jordan tells ESPN of the now iconic shot that put the precocious teenager on the road to becoming a household name.

Even with his success in the championship game, Jordan continued working to get better. Jordan managed to "improve considerably between his freshman and sophomore year," former UNC coach Dean Smith said in one interview that's included in the ESPN documentary.

Jordan would play three seasons at UNC before the Bulls selected him with the third overall pick of the 1984 NBA Draft. Once he entered the NBA, Jordan once again found himself needing to work harder than ever to improve his skills and prove himself to his teammates.

"From the first day of practice, my mentality was: 'Whoever is the team leader of the team, I'm going to be going after him. And I'm not going to do it with my voice.' Because I had no voice. I had no status. I had to do it with the way that I played," Jordan tells ESPN about his rookie year in Chicago.

Today, Jordan's intense work ethic is legendary, as reporters and former teammates often recount how the iconic athlete often competed just as hard in practice as he did in actual games. One famous quote from Jordan seems to sum up that ethos: "I don't do things half-heartedly. Because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results."

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Michael Jordan

• Born February 17 , 1963 · Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
• Birth name Michael Jeffrey Jordan
• His Airness
• Roster Guard
• Height 6′ 5½″ (1.97 m)
• Michael Jeffrey Jordan was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 17, 1963. He was the fourth of five children born to James and Deloris. James Jordan was a mechanic and Deloris Jordan was a bank teller. Soon after Michael's birth, James and Deloris felt that the streets of Brooklyn were unsafe to raise a family, so they moved the family to Wilmington, North Carolina. As a youngster, Michael immediately became interested in sports. However, it was baseball not basketball that was his first love. He would play catch in the yard with his father, who loved baseball. He soon started to play basketball to try and follow in the footsteps of his older brother, Larry, whom he idolized growing up. At Laney High School, as a sophomore, he decided to try out for the varsity team but was cut because he was raw and undersized. The following summer, he grew four inches and practiced tirelessly. The hard work paid off as he averaged 25 points per game in his last two years and was selected to the McDonald's All-American Team as a senior. Following high school, he earned a basketball scholarship from North Carolina University where he would play under legendary coach Dean Smith. In his first year, he was named ACC Freshman of the Year. He would help lead the Tarheels to the 1982 NCAA Championship, making the game-winning shot. After winning the Naismith College Player of the Year award in 1984, Jordan decided to leave North Carolina to enter the NBA draft. Although he decided to leave college early, he would later return to the university in 1986 to complete his degree in geography. In the 1984 NBA draft, he was selected with the third overall pick by the Chicago Bulls. As a rookie for the Bulls, he made an immediate impact, averaging an amazing 28.2 points a game, including six games where he scored 40+ points. He was selected to the NBA All-Star Game and named Rookie of the Year. This would just be the beginning of a career filled with awards and accolades. In the upcoming years, he would go on to win five regular season MVP awards, six NBA championships, six NBA finals MVP awards, three All-Star game MVP awards, and a defensive player of the year award. In 1993, tragedy struck Jordan's seemingly perfect life. On July 23, 1993, his father, James, was murdered off Interstate 95 in North Carolina. Two locals had robbed him, shot him in the chest and threw his body in a swamp. Three months later on October 6, 1993, following a run of three consecutive NBA championships, Jordan announced his retirement from basketball citing that "he no longer had the desire to play." Now "retired" at age 33, it was uncertain what Jordan would do next. Would he take a year off out of the public eye to grieve and then come back to the Bulls? Would he go out and look for a white collar job in the field of geography, his college major? Or would he take up a completely different hobby like golf? In early 1994, Jordan decided to take up a new hobby alright. However, it wasn't golf. It was baseball. Despite not playing baseball since high school some 13 years ago, he signed a minor league contract with the Chicago White Sox in 1994. He played one unspectacular season for the Double-A Birmingham Barons. On March 18, 1995, Jordan, a man of few words since his retirement, sent two important words to media sources everywhere: "I'm Back". He celebrated his return to the NBA by doing what he always did best: winning. Although the Bulls would lose in the playoffs to the Orlando Magic, it was obvious that Jordan was still the same superstar player. He would go on to lead the Bulls to three more consecutive NBA championships and etch his place in the history as the "NBA's greatest player of all-time". On January 13, 1999, Jordan re-announced his retirement, saying that "he was 99.9 percent sure that he would never play again". Soon after, Jordan became part owner of the Washington Wizards. Near the start of the 2001-02 season, there were hints that Jordan may try another comeback to the NBA. On September 25, 2001, Jordan confirmed those rumors, announcing that he would once again return to the NBA as a member of the Wizards. His two seasons in Washington were mediocre at best. His statistics were solid and he showed some flashes of his old self but he could not lead the Wizards to the playoffs and missed several games due to injury. He retired for good following the 2002-03 season and was subsequently dismissed as president of the Washington Wizards. In June 2006, he became part owner of the Charlotte Bobcats. Later that year, he filed for divorce from Juanita, his wife of 17 years. They have three children together. - IMDb Mini Biography By: SteveG
• Michael Jordan is an American former professional basketball player and the principal owner of the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Jordan played 15 seasons in the NBA, winning six championships with the Chicago Bulls . Michael Jordan's individual accolades and accomplishments include six NBA Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP) Awards, ten scoring titles (both all-time records), five MVP Awards, ten All-NBA First Team designations, nine All-Defensive First Team honors, fourteen NBA All-Star Game selections, three All-Star Game MVP Awards, three steals titles, and the 1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. He holds the NBA records for highest career regular season scoring average (30.12 points per game) and highest career playoff scoring average (33.45 points per game). In 1999, he was named the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century by ESPN. He became a member of the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2015. In 2014, Jordan became the first billionaire player in NBA history. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Tango Papa
• Spouses Yvette Prieto (April 27, 2013 - present) (2 children) Juanita Jordan (September 2, 1989 - December 29, 2006) (divorced, 3 children)
• Children Jeffrey Jordan Marcus Jordan Jasmine Jordan Victoria Jordan Ysabel Jordan
• Number 23 jersey
• Air Jordan sneakers
• Fequently sticks his tongue out when making amazing dunks or layups
• ear ring in left ear
• In a 1988 game against the Utah Jazz, he dunked over John Stockton , who was 6' 1" and 175 pounds. A Jazz fan heckled him, saying, "Why don't you dunk on somebody your own size?" The next trip down the floor, Jordan dunked again, this time on 6' 11", 285-lb. center Melvin Turpin . He then turned to the fan and said, "Was he big enough?".
• In Space Jam (1996) , he tells the Looney Tunes that he used to wear his UNC shorts under his Bulls jersey in every game he played in. He really did do this, as a good luck charm.
• Neither of his parents are more than 5' 9" tall.
• While most are familiar with his obvious #23 and the #45 he wore when he returned from a brief baseball career in 1995, Jordan also wore #12. However, he wore it in only one game--in 1990 after an Orlando Magic Arena employee stole his uniform. It was a back-up jersey and did not even feature a last name. He scored 49 points in the game, leading the Bulls win over the Magic.
• His 1992 playoff game against the Portland Trail Blazers, where he had 35 first-half points and nailed six three-pointers in a row, has been claimed by many as "the closest anyone has ever come to playing a perfect game of basketball." Ironically, Jordan was bypassed in the 1984 draft by the Trail Blazers, who picked Sam Bowie instead, a move that has gone down in history as one of the biggest draft-day blunders.
• If you're trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I've had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.
• You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them. -- GQ, March, 1989.
• In my prime I can probably take LeBron but I'm not sure about Kobe
• [from an a 1997 American Prospect article]Republicans buy sneakers, too
• If you put in the work, the results will come.

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Michael Jordan: A timeline of the NBA legend

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A look at the Hall of Fame career of Michael Jordan :

Feb. 17, 1963: Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to parents James Sr. and Deloris Jordan.

1979: Cut from the varsity team at Laney High in Wilmington N.C.

1981: After two varsity seasons, is selected a McDonald’s All-American and accepts a scholarship to University of North Carolina.

March 29, 1982: Makes game-winning shot in NCAA tournament final against Georgetown.

June 19, 1984: Selected No. 3 by the Chicago Bulls in the NBA draft after centers Hakeem Ojaluwon and Sam Bowie.

Aug. 10, 1984: Scores 20 points in gold-medal game in the L.A. Summer Olympics.

May 16, 1985: Selected rookie of the year after averaging 28.2 points, 6.5 rebounds and 5.9 assists.

Sept. 15, 1985: Air Jordan 1 basketball shoes released by Nike.

Oct. 29, 1985: Breaks his left foot in a game at the Golden State Warriors, misses the next 61 games before returning in time for end of season and playoffs.

April 20, 1986: Scores an NBA-record 63 points in a playoff game, a 135-131 overtime loss to Boston.

April 16, 1987: Scores 61 points in a loss to Atlanta, capping three-game stretch during which he averages 54.7 points. Wins first of 10 scoring titles.

Feb. 6, 1988: Defeats Dominique Wilkins in the NBA dunk contest in Chicago. It’s the second consecutive dunk contest win for Jordan. One night later, wins his first All-Star game MVP award.

May 25, 1988: Selected NBA most valuable player for first time, beating out Boston’s Larry Bird and the Lakers’ Magic Johnson.

May 7, 1989: Makes a game-winning jumper in a deciding Game 5 first-round playoff series against the Cleveland Cavaliers. It’s simply known as “the Shot.”

Michael Jordan makes “The Shot” to lead the Chicago Bulls to a Game 5 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

July 10, 1989: Days after firing Doug Collins, the Bulls hire Phil Jackson to be their fourth coach of the Jordan era.

June 5, 1991: Playing in his first NBA Finals, Jordan rises up in the paint to dunk, switching hands midair for an acrobatic layup against the Lakers. “The Move” helps propel the Bulls to their first NBA title.

June 3, 1992: Jordan makes six three-point shots in the first half of Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Portland Trail Blazers, turning to the crowd and shrugging his shoulders. The Bulls win the series in six games.

Aug. 8, 1992: Jordan scores 22 points as the “Dream Team” wins gold at the Barcelona Olympics. On the medal stand, Jordan is draped in the American flag, covering the Reebok logo on his team-issued warmup jacket.

June 20, 1993: Jordan has 33 points, eight rebounds and seven assists, but it’s John Paxson who makes the game-winning three-pointer in the Bulls’ 99-98 win over the Phoenix Suns for title No. 3. Jordan is Finals MVP for the third time in a row.

Aug. 3, 1993: After missing for three weeks, the body of Jordan’s father is found in a South Carolina creek, although positive identification comes 11 days later. Daniel Green and Larry Demery are later charged and convicted of murder.

Oct. 6, 1993: In a room filled with coaches, teammates and NBA Commissioner David Stern, Jordan announces his retirement. He says there’s a possibility he could return.

Oct. 23, 1993: In federal court, Jordan testifies that a $53,000 check he wrote to James (Slim) Bouler was to cover gambling losses. He originally said the check was a loan for Bouler to open a driving range.

Feb. 7, 1994: Jordan signs a contract to play baseball for the Chicago White Sox. He plays for the double-A Birmingham Barons, hitting .202.

March 18, 1995: Jordan rejoins the Bulls with a two-word fax: “I’m back.”

March 28, 1995: Facing the Knicks in Madison Square Garden, Jordan, wearing No. 45, scores 55 points before finding Bill Wennington for the game-winning jumper. It was the record for the most points scored by an opponent at the Garden — a record Kobe Bryant would break.

May 18, 1995: The Bulls are eliminated in the second round of the playoffs by Shaquille O’Neal and the Orlando Magic. It’s the first playoff series Jordan has lost since June, 3 1990.

April 21, 1996: Alongside Toni Kukoc, Scottie Pippen and newly acquired Dennis Rodman, the Bulls beat the Washington Bullets 103-93 to win their 72nd game of the season, an NBA record. Jordan is the league’s MVP.

June 16, 1996: The Bulls cap a postseason in which they lost only three times by beating the Seattle SuperSonics 87-75. Jordan wins his fourth Finals MVP.

July 13, 1996: Jordan signs a one-year deal worth $30 million, the biggest single-season contract in American team sports history.

Nov. 15, 1996: Space Jam, a movie starring Jordan alongside Bugs Bunny and the rest of the Looney Toons, is released. The movie grossed $230 million despite mixed reviews.

June 11, 1997: A physically depleted Jordan scores 33 in Game 5 of the Finals in what will be known as “The Flu Game.”

June 13, 1997: Jordan and the Bulls win their fifth title, beating the Utah Jazz in six games. Jordan scores 39 in the clincher, winning another Finals MVP.

July 24, 1997: The Bulls sign Phil Jackson to a one-year deal worth $6 million, but management makes it clear that it will be his last season with the Bulls, setting the stage for “The Last Dance.”

June 14, 1998: Jordan scores 45, including a title-winning jumper after he nudges Utah’s Byron Russell before burying an open shot. Chicago wins its sixth title and Jordan collects a sixth Finals MVP. It’s the last basket he’ll make for the Bulls.

Jan. 13, 1999: Saying he is mentally exhausted, Jordan retires from the NBA for a second time.

Jan. 19, 2000: Jordan becomes part owner and team president of the Washington Wizards. His tenure is defined by the decision to select center Kwame Brown out of high school with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2001 NBA draft.

Sept. 25, 2001: Jordan comes out of retirement (again), this time suiting up for the Wizards. He averages 22.9 points in 60 games in his first season back.

April 16, 2003: Jordan plays in his last game in the NBA, scoring 15 points.

May 7, 2003: Wizards owner Abe Polin fires Jordan from his role as team president after three-plus unsuccessful years.

June 15, 2006: Jordan purchases a minority stake in the Charlotte Bobcats from BET founder Robert Johnson, becoming the team’s “managing member of basketball operations.”

Sept. 11, 2009: Jordan is inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, delivering a scathing speech of the people who doubted him.

March 17, 2010: Jordan buys majority ownership of the Charlotte Bobcats, now known as the Hornets, for $275 million, becoming the first former NBA player to become a majority owner.

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Michael Jordan's Life Before He Became an NBA Star

A career as a professional basketball player wasn't always Jordan's destiny, though a few key factors propelled him to become the "greatest basketball player of all time."

Jordan's stable home life remained consistent even after his immediate family moved to the city of Wilmington in the late 1960s, with parents James and Deloris establishing high academic standards and firm ground rules to keep their five children out of trouble.

It was James, a maintenance worker turned supervisor at General Electric, who introduced Jordan to his first athletic love, baseball and built a basketball court in the backyard (and also reportedly inspired Jordan's notorious tongue wag with his own facial contortions).

However, companions recall Deloris, a bank teller, as the more forceful presence of his parents. Her strong will would later be reflected in her son's renowned drive to succeed.

His rivalry with his brother fueled Jordan's desire to be the better player

If the backyard court provided the canvas for Jordan to develop his basketball genius, then it was the presence of its other regular occupant that unleashed the beast of his competitive spirit. Larry Jordan was a year older, and while Michael was already taller, Larry was stronger, equally athletic and not inclined to lose to his younger brother.

The two went full steam at each other on the court every day until bedtime, with Deloris stepping in to calm the boys when things grew too heated.

A determined Jordan eventually figured out how to win on a regular basis and his continuing growth widened the gap between them, but it wasn't clear who the superior athlete was before he reached that point.

Noted their high school basketball coach, Pop Herring, "Larry was so driven and so competitive an athlete that if he had been 6'2" instead of 5'7", I'm sure Michael would have been known as Larry's brother instead of Larry always being known as Michael's brother."

Jordan didn't initially make his high school varsity basketball team

Jordan has often rehashed the popular legend that he was cut from the Laney High School varsity basketball team as a sophomore, inspiring him to work harder and get better, but that's not exactly how things went down.

All basketball hopefuls tried out for coach Herring in the fall of 1978, and Jordan, along with the rest of the promising underclassmen, were assigned to the junior varsity team, with the lone exception of his friend, classmate and rival, Leroy Smith.

It's difficult to argue with the reasoning: The team was returning 14 of 15 players from the previous year, and most – like the then-5'9" Jordan – played one of the smaller guard positions. With the Buccaneers in need of a tree to block shots and rebound, it made perfect sense to select the 6'7" Smith for the final roster spot.

Along with providing a jolt of motivation, the decision helped Jordan develop into a floor leader with regular playing time, and the Laney JV games soon became the hot ticket in town.

Furthermore, Coach Herring showed he had Jordan's best interests at heart by personally running him through drills every day as a junior. The hard work – and a fortuitous growth spurt – turning the gangly teenager into the Laney varsity alpha dog.

He was a standout at basketball camp

If there was a time when the legend of Michael Jordan took root, when teammates and onlookers began to grasp that they were witnessing a talent for the ages, it was during the summer of 1980.

Invited to the annual camp run by the University of North Carolina head basketball coach Dean Smith, a showcase for the state's top players, the Wilmington boy quickly distinguished himself from the pack. UNC assistant coach Roy Williams was stunned by Jordan's combination of athleticism, quickness, intensity, and instincts.

After a day of practice, he told fellow assistant Eddie Fogler, "I think I've just seen the best 6'4" high school player I've ever seen."

Williams then made the rookie mistake of arranging for Jordan to attend the Five-Star Camp outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Although this one featured blue-chip basketball prospects from around the country, as opposed to the smaller pool in North Carolina, the 17-year-old Jordan again treated the competition like a punching bag, transforming him into a must-have college recruit.

Fortunately for the Carolina brass, James and Deloris Jordan had taken to Williams and the paternal Dean Smith, influencing their son's decision to commit to UNC.

READ MORE: How Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird Led the Dream Team to Olympic Gold

Jordan did not receive special treatment at UNC, which kept him humble

After a senior season in which Laney narrowly missed out on a division title and its best player averaged a triple-double, Jordan continued to soar with a record 30 points in the McDonald's All-American Game.

However, he soon experienced a welcome return to earth with his immersion in Dean Smith's program at UNC. The even-keeled Smith forged team unity by treating his stars and benchwarmers equally, and Jordan was happy to let his effort do the talking in the highly regimented practices.

"[Smith] was the perfect guy for me," Jordan later said. "He kept me humble, but he challenged me."

As it turned out, they were perfect for each other: When Jordan coolly sank a go-ahead jump shot with 15 seconds left in the 1982 NCAA title game against Georgetown University, he gave Coach Smith his first NCAA championship.

And with that first major, televised triumph, Jordan was officially on the map as a young American sports star, ready for the next steps in a career that would carry him to unprecedented heights of success and fame.

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How a Racist Panic Over “Sneaker Murders” Changed Michael Jordan

In 1990 an explosive cover story fed the era’s fearmongering—and demanded that the megastar account for it..

For a moment, Rick Telander thought, Michael Jordan looked like he might cry. In 1990 the senior writer from Sports Illustrated approached Jordan before practice and told him about the murder of a 15-year-old Black boy named Michael Eugene Thomas. About a year earlier, the ninth grader from Anne Arundel, Maryland, had paid $115.50 for a pair of Air Jordans. The young fan worshipped the Chicago Bulls star and the shoes embroidered with his silhouette. Every night, he took his sneakers out of a black shoebox and polished them proudly. But about two weeks after he bought the Air Jordans, schoolchildren found him barefoot in the woods, strangled, face down in a puddle. Shortly thereafter, police charged his 17-year-old “basketball buddy” James David Martin with first-degree murder.

Jordan sighed. He didn’t know what to say. Sitting in a private room at the team’s suburban practice facility in Deerfield, Illinois, he struggled to process an incomprehensible and heinous crime. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “Choked to death. By his friend.” Jordan asked Telander if he knew about similar crimes. Unfortunately, Telander explained, he had read numerous accounts like this one. In his jarring story, he wrote about the “frightening outbreak of crimes among poor black kids” assaulting and sometimes killing one another for sneakers and Starter jackets. After collecting stories from Chicago newspapers and Sports Illustrated’s national news bureau, Telander concluded that the crimes were not new but “the pace of the carnage [had] quickened.”

In April of that year, New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick, a cynical crusader disillusioned with the greed and hypocrisy of sports, blamed Nike spokesmen Jordan and Spike Lee for a wave of inner-city “sneaker killings,” claiming that the crimes had morphed into an epidemic. Shortly thereafter, Sports Illustrated published Telander’s sensational cover story, “Your Sneakers or Your Life,” which created a simple narrative: Black kids killed other Black kids for shoes worn by the great Black basketball hero.

For the first time in his career, people began questioning Jordan’s influence upon Black youth, demanding that he account for the sneaker murders. The public scrutiny would force him to confront his own role in the nation’s racial divide. Despite all the praise he had received for supposedly transcending race, this episode sparked Jordan’s realization that he could never really evade the burden of representing Black America.

In Chicago, where Telander lived, the city papers devoted copious amounts of ink covering two phenomena: the ascendance of Jordan and a rising wave of violent crime. Between 1989 and 1990, Chicago’s murder rate climbed 14.5 percent. City aldermen decried a “murder epidemic” that afflicted Chicago’s youth. One survey found that 74 percent of Chicago school students had witnessed a murder, shooting, stabbing, or robbery, and nearly half of them had been victims themselves. For middle-class Americans far removed from the country’s urban centers, cities resembled lawless war zones. “Violent crime,” Newsweek reported, “much of it drug-related, is on the rise in virtually every city in America. Inner city neighborhoods are disintegrating in an escalating cycle of mayhem.”

Increasingly in the 1980s, in Chicago and other cities, white reporters treated violent transgressions like spectacles, embellishing an image of a Black underclass that produced roving hordes of violent juvenile delinquents. “When the sun sets on Chicago’s West Side, the armies of the night come out to play,” Paul Weingarten wrote for the Tribune. “People in the neighborhoods retreat into their homes—or if they’re brave to their porches—and wait. Out in the night, a new order takes shape. It is an alien world, strange and incomprehensible. A world where junior-high kids carry shotguns, and no one ventures out unarmed.”

The alarm over sneaker crimes reflected a growing anxiety over “ juvenile superpredators —radically impulsive, brutally remorseless youngsters, including ever more pre-teenage boys, who murder, assault, rape, rob, burglarize, deal deadly drugs, join gun-toting gangs, and create serious communal disorders.” Columnists accused apparel companies of encouraging “violent lifestyles by directing advertising campaigns toward black urban teens.” Without any evidence, they suggested that such marketing was an effective strategy because basketball was “the sport of choice among urban drug dealers.” Like Mushnick, John Leo, a conservative writer for U.S. News & World Report, argued that Nike exploited impoverished inner-city Black youth who could not afford Air Jordans. Some of them legitimately worked and saved for the shoes, Leo wrote, but others acquired them illegally or paid for them using drug money. Using coded language, Leo suggested that Black people were more susceptible than white people to advertising that emboldened them to commit crimes. “The line ‘Just Do It’ means one thing to the middle-class, and something else to people in the ghetto,” he said. “To the middle-class, it means get in shape, whereas in the ghetto it means, ‘Don’t have any moral compunction—just go out and do whatever you have to do in your predicament.’ There’s an immoral message imbedded in there.”

Liz Dolan, Nike’s director of public relations, combated charges of exploitation by arguing that sneaker crimes were not a result of advertising. Rather, the root of the problem stemmed from income inequality and a growing sense of “hopelessness” in the inner cities. Furthermore, she told Telander, Nike’s endorsers were excellent role models. Who was a better example for children than Michael Jordan? “What’s baffling to us,” she said, “is how easily people accept the assumption that black youth is an unruly mob that will do anything to get its hands on what it wants. They’ll say, ‘Show a black kid something he wants, and he’ll kill for it.’ I think it’s racist hysteria.”

In response to Mushnick, Spike Lee wrote an op-ed in the National, a short-lived daily sports paper. Lee suspected that the New York Post writer who started the furor against him and Jordan had “a hidden agenda” couched in “thinly veiled racism.” He wanted to know why Mushnick, who had never given so much attention to poor Black kids before, suddenly became interested in their plight now. Further, Lee maintained that his commercials with Jordan were not exclusively directed toward Black youth. Car theft was a major urban crime too—millions of cars were stolen or looted annually—but no one called for Jordan to stop doing Chevy commercials.

Unlike Lee, Jordan never publicly said that the attacks on him stemmed from racism, but he clearly felt that he was targeted in a way that white athletes were not. “It’s kind of ironic that the press builds people like me up to be a role model and then blames us for the unfortunate crimes kids are committing,” he said. “Kids commit crimes to get NFL jackets, cars, jewelry, and many other things. But nobody is criticizing people who promote those products. I also don’t hear anybody knocking other sports stars like Larry Bird and Joe Montana, who also endorse their brand of shoes and other sporting goods.”

Implicitly, Jordan suggested that blaming him for sneaker crimes was unfair because reporters failed to provide precise numbers when writing of murders involving products bearing his name. How many teenagers were killed for wearing expensive sneakers? And how many of them wore Air Jordans? Did anybody know? In interviews with police officers, Telander tried to answer those questions and received varying answers. The Atlanta police estimated that over a period of four months, they encountered more than 50 mugging cases involving sportswear. A Chicago police sergeant estimated there were 50 incidents involving jackets and about a dozen shoe crimes each month. But Richard Lapchick, director for the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University, argued that reports about sneaker murders were grossly exaggerated. A month after Telander published his story, Lapchick told an Associated Press writer that since 1983, there had been only nine documented murders involving sneakers.

Yet Telander’s 4,000-word cover story, bolstered by television news reports, gave the impression that “an unconscionable number of killings have actually occurred over status-symbol sneakers, pro or college team jackets, and major league baseball caps.” In the second week of May 1990, when Sports Illustrated’s subscribers opened their mailboxes, they found the most provocative cover of the year: an illustration of an armed Black man pointing a revolver into the back of another man wearing a satin Starter jacket as the gunman snatched the victim’s Air Jordans.

Telander’s story did pose an important question: What could explain the violence over expensive shoes and jackets? Elijah Anderson, a distinguished sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, suggested that the crimes were linked to larger forces of racial inequality. “The uneducated, inner-city kids don’t have a sense of opportunity,” he said. “They feel the system is closed off to them. And yet they’re bombarded with the same cultural apparatus that the white middle class is. They don’t have the means to attain the things offered, and yet they have the same desires. So, they value those ‘emblems,’ these symbols of supposed success. The gold, the shoes, the drug dealer’s outfit—those things all belie the real situation, but it’s a symbolic display that seems to say that things are all right.”

The narratives produced about sneaker killings perpetuated the myth of Black-on-Black crime, a trope rooted in the racist idea that Black Americans were or are inherently more violent than white people. Studies have shown that most violent crimes occur between people who live near one another, which in a residentially segregated country meant that most violent acts were intraracial. And yet no one ever used the phrase white-on-white crime . Instead, news reports about sneaker murders pathologized Black youth as criminals who valued “pieces of rubber and plastic held together by shoelaces … more than human life.” Mushnick insisted, “The only kids dying for the kind of outrageously expensive junk these influential Afro-American role models are pushing are black kids.” But was that true? Did Mushnick or other writers ever investigate whether sneaker crimes occurred in the suburbs? Or did they just assume that sneaker crimes took place only in urban neighborhoods? According to Mushnick’s logic, Spike Lee wrote, “poor whites won’t kill for a pair of Jordans, but poor blacks will.”

In response to Sports Illustrated’s cover story, Chicago journalists and fans defended Jordan. Chicago Sun-Times columnist Raymond Coffey wrote, “What is really senseless here is any suggestion that Michael Jordan has blood on his hands for selling shoes on TV. The people responsible for killing people are the people who kill people.” Joseph H. Brown, a Black man who grew up on the South Side of Chicago during the ’60s, agreed. In a letter to Sports Illustrated, Brown wrote, “None of this is Jordan’s fault. He is not responsible for the moral decay in our inner cities. … The moral revival that is needed to stop this madness must be carried out by families, churches, schools, and community organizations, not by a slam-dunking hoopster.”

Telander did not blame Jordan for the sneaker crimes, even if the magazine cover implicated the Nike pitchman. In fact, in the story, Telander portrayed Jordan as a sympathetic figure suffering from a devastating loss, saddened that Black boys he had never met were killed simply because they wore his shoes. In a sense, then, Jordan grieved with the nation; America’s tragedy was his tragedy, and he mourned as deeply as the real victims’ families. If previously he had believed that being an example of self-help and self-empowerment would help inner-city kids, Jordan now recognized that he could not rescue them. “I thought I’d be helping out others and everything would be positive,” he told Telander. “I thought people would try to emulate the good things I do. They’d try to achieve to be better. Nothing bad.”

In so many instances, observed Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene, Jordan appeared completely confident answering questions about various matters outside of basketball. Yet these crimes perplexed and distressed him. What could he do about it? “I don’t have the answer,” he said. “If a parent in a high-crime neighborhood sees his son or daughter going out the door with your brand of shoes on, and the parent is scared,” Greene asked, “what can you possibly say, knowing that?”

“I would tell the parents to tell their kids: ‘Please give it up.’ ”

“Give up the clothing? If the child is being robbed?”

“Yes, give it up. The jacket, the shoes—give it up.” Then, Jordan said something without thinking through the implications. “They should tell the kids I will buy them a replacement.” Not Nike, he insisted, but Jordan himself. He would replace the stolen shoes.

Jumpman: The Making and Meaning of Michael Jordan

By Johnny Smith. Basic Books.

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It seemed unrealistic that Jordan could provide insurance to every kid who bought his shoes, but he conceived of his own power in financial terms. He could not imagine joining community activists in the fight against inner-city crime or urban poverty. The only movement he belonged to was the one that hyped the products with his name on them.

And yet the crime stories attached to his name weighed on Jordan, exposing his vulnerability in a way that little else did. He simply couldn’t make sense of the awful violence in America’s cities. “It just makes me so sad,” he said. “The whole thing. Everything is changing.”

Jordan didn’t have the answers to the sneaker murders. And he quickly realized that nothing good came from talking about it. Burying his feelings helped bury the story.

Excerpt adapted from  Jumpman: The Making and Meaning of Michael Jordan  by Johnny Smith. Copyright 2023. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.