Michael Jordan

American basketball player

• Born: February 17, 1963
• Place of Birth: Brooklyn, New York

Jordan, a pure shooter, prolific scorer, and soaring jumper, is considered one of the greatest professional basketball players in history. In addition, his charisma made him one of the most marketable professional athletes, earning him millions of dollars in product endorsements. He not only is credited with having popularized the game around the globe but also has a name that has become synonymous with American basketball.

Early Life

Michael Jordan was born in Brooklyn, New York, to James Jordan, a mechanic for General Electric, and Deloris Jordan, a customer-service supervisor at a bank. Jordan’s family moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, a few months after his birth. He had two brothers, Ronald and Larry, and two sisters, Roslyn and Deloris.

Jordan’s close-knit family instilled in him a strong work ethic and encouraged him to avoid alcohol, drugs, and street gangs. His family felt that by avoiding these vices, Jordan would develop his full potential. He played a variety of sports, including basketball, baseball, and football, and he ran track. He began his sports career in Little League baseball and once pitched two games without allowing hits. Regardless of the sport he played, Jordan was a determined athlete, leading his brothers to give him the nickname Rabbit.

Jordan did not make the basketball team at Laney High School his freshman year, in part because of his height, or lack thereof. He was only five feet eleven inches tall as a freshman, an exceptional height in his family. He barely made the basketball team at the beginning of his sophomore year and began to believe that baseball would be his true calling. However, Jordan grew three inches by his junior year and then added three more inches by his senior year, reaching his final height of six feet six inches soon thereafter. This growth spurt enabled him to excel in basketball. He had the legs of a high jumper and the shoulders of a football linebacker.

Jordan’s high school basketball coach, Clifton Herring, picked up the young athlete each morning at 6:00 to practice the game before school. During the summer of his junior year at Laney, Jordan’s coach persuaded Howie Garfinkel to allow Jordan to participate in his summer Five-Star Basketball Camp in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a camp designed for college basketball prospects. It was at this camp that Jordan came to believe that he was destined to do great things in the sport.

Following the summer camp, in which he excelled, Jordan became one of the most sought-after high school basketball players in the United States. At the beginning of his senior year in 1981, he accepted a basketball scholarship to play for legendary coach Dean Smith at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). Jordan’s career at UNC began erratically, and he averaged 13.5 points and four rebounds per game. It was not until the 1982 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championship game against Georgetown University that Jordan showed his greatness. In the final seconds of the game, Jordan made a fifteen-foot basket that put UNC ahead of Georgetown by one point, enough to win the championship for UNC. Jordan was selected the Atlantic Coast Conference Rookie of the Year.

After his junior year (1984), in which he was named College Player of the Year by Sporting News, Jordan left UNC and entered the National Basketball Association (NBA) draft. Before the NBA season, however, he starred during the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, leading the men’s basketball team to a gold medal.

Professional Career, Later Life

The Chicago Bulls selected Jordan in the third round of the draft of 1984. After about a month with the Bulls, he was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine with the headline "A Star Is Born," and he would be on the cover of that magazine fifty times more during his two-decade career. Jordan was also voted the NBA’s 1984–85 Rookie of the Year.

Jordan missed sixty-four consecutive games due to a broken foot during the 1984–85 season. He made a dramatic comeback during the playoffs by scoring 63 points in one game against the Boston Celtics and averaging 43.7 points per game during the three-game series. His greatest season in the NBA was 1986–87, in which he scored 3,041 points, becoming only the second player to have reached that milestone, behind Wilt Chamberlain. Jordan also had a shooting percentage of 48.2 and averaged 37.1 points per game. That same season the Bulls advanced to the playoffs for the third year in a row. Also in 1986, Jordan returned to school at UNC and completed his undergraduate degree in cultural geography. He received his first Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award, given by the NBA, in 1988. He also was named Defensive Player of the Year in 1988.

Jordan led the NBA in scoring once more in 1987–88, shooting 53.8 percent and averaging 32.5 points per game. Although the Bulls lost to the Detroit Pistons for a third consecutive year in the 1990 league championship, Jordan scored 33.6 points per game and shot 52.6 percent for the season. He won consecutive MVP Awards in 1991 and 1992 and helped the team win its first NBA championship in 1991. At the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, he was a member of the US Olympic basketball team known as the Dream Team because it featured many outstanding NBA players and helped the team win a gold medal for the United States.

With his charismatic personality, Jordan became a natural at endorsing many name brand products early in his career. The Nike Air Jordan basketball shoe, which he began endorsing in 1985, sold quite well, and by 1988 he was earning four times his NBA annual salary of $800,000 with product endorsements for McDonald’s, Chevrolet, and Nike.

Following the death of his father, who was murdered at a rest stop on Interstate 95 in North Carolina just before the 1993–94 season, Jordan announced his retirement from the NBA. He honored his father’s memory by returning to professional sports as a baseball player. In 1994 he signed a minor-league contract with the Chicago White Sox and was assigned to the Birmingham Barons, but his baseball career was less successful. He rejoined the Bulls in March 1995 and was back in form by the following season, leading the NBA in scoring with a 30.4 points-per-game average. The Bulls, with Jordan’s help, won the NBA championship title in 1996 and again in 1998. He also won his sixth and final MVP Award from the NBA.

Jordan retired as a player for a second time on January 13, 1999, but returned to the NBA as president of operations and as co-owner of the Washington Wizards. On September 25, 2001, at the age of thirty-eight, he returned once again to the NBA to play for the Wizards, but his return was cut short because of injuries. His final game as a player came in 2003 at the NBA All-Star game, during which he passed the legendary center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the top All-Star-game scorer.

In May 2003, Jordan was released as a player from the Wizards, but he continued his ties to the league by signing on as the operations manager for the Charlotte Bobcats. On March 17, 2010, the NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved Jordan's purchase of the majority interest in the Bobcats, making him the first former NBA player to be the majority owner of an NBA team. During the 2011 NBA lockout, Jordan reportedly led a group of ten to fourteen owners who pushed to limit the players' share of revenues to 50 percent, versus the players union's demand for at least 52.5 percent of revenue. Jordan was criticized for his hardline stance during negotiations. He was also criticized for the Bobcats' performance during the shortened 2011–2012 season, which, with a .106 winning percentage, was the worst in NBA history. In December 2013 the Bobcats announced that the team name would change to the Charlotte Hornets for the 2014–15 season. Upon the sale of his majority stake in 2023, he became a minority owner of the team. At that point, views of his tenure remained mixed, as the team had only secured game victories 41.7 percent of the time and had only reached the playoffs on three occasions.

Following his reduction in Hornets ownership, Jordan directed more of his attention to another sports venture that he had begun in 2020: co-ownership of the NASCAR Cup Series team 23XI Racing, whose drivers had included Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick.

Jordan married Juanita Vanoy in 1989; the couple had two sons, Jeffrey Michael and Marcus James, and one daughter, Jasmine. The couple, however, divorced in 2007. In 2013, he married Yvette Prieto, and in 2014 they had twin daughters, Victoria and Ysabel.

Significance

Jordan is considered to be not only one of the greatest professional basketball players in history, with a career that spanned two decades, but also one of the most marketable athletes in professional sports history. During his first decade in the league, he had a net worth of $100 million. In 2015 Forbes magazine announced that Jordan had officially become the world's first billionaire athlete in June 2014, thanks to an increase in the value of his stake in the Hornets to about $500 million and personal earnings from his Nike Jordan brand of about $90 million.

Jordan was instrumental in the six NBA championships for the Chicago Bulls. He won the finals MVP Award for each of those championship series and was named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player five times during his career, named to the All-NBA First Team ten times, and named to the NBA All-Defensive First Team nine times. In the end, Jordan amassed more than 30,000 total points over his career and ranks as one of the game’s top all-time scorers. His contributions to the game of basketball as a player and executive, as well as his reputation as one of the greatest and most well-known athletes of all time, led to Jordan's reception of the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian honor in the United States—from President Barack Obama in 2016. In December 2022, the NBA announced that it was renaming the NBA MVP award to "The Michael Jordan Trophy" in honor of Jordan's legacy as one of the greatest NBA players of all time.

Bibliography

Alexander, Dan. "Record 290 Newcomers Join Forbes Billionaires List, Including Michael Jordan." Forbes, 2 Mar. 2015. www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2015/03/02/record-290-newcomers-join-forbes-billionaires-list-including-michael-jordan/. Accessed 5 May. 2015.

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

Jordan, Deloris, et al. Salt in His Shoes: Michael Jordan in Pursuit of a Dream. Aladdin, 2003.

Jordan, Michael, and Mark Vancil. Driven from Within. Atria, 2006.

Jordan, Michael, and Mark Vancil. For the Love of the Game: My Story. Crown, 1998.

Lafeber, Walter. Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism. Norton, 2002.

Leahy, Michael. When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan’s Last Comeback. Simon, 2005.

Lovitt, Chip. Michael Jordan. Apple, 1999.

Porter, David. Michael Jordan: A Biography. Greenwood, 2007.

Smith, Sam. "The Michael Jordan Trophy: NBA MVP Renamed after the Greatest Player of All-Time." National Basketball Association, 13 Dec. 2022, www.nba.com/bulls/news/the-nba-renames-mvp-trophy-after-michael-jordan. Accessed 4 Jan. 2023.

Sprigley, Joseph. "Michael Jordan Celebrates Spoils of Victory at Talladega with Tyler Reddick, 23XI Racing." Racing America, 22 Apr. 2024, www.racingamerica.com/news/nascar/michael-jordan-celebrates-spoils-of-victory-at-talladega-with-tyler-reddick-23xi-racing. Accessed 11 July 2024.

Taylor, Phil. "Michael Jordan at 50 (It's Complicated)." Sports Illustrated, 18 Feb. 2013, vault.si.com/vault/2013/02/18/michael-jordan-at-50-its-complicated. Accessed 11 July 2024.

Thompson, Wright. "Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building." ESPN, 14 Feb. 2013, www.espn.com/espn/feature/story?‗slug‗=michael-jordan-not-left-building&page=Michael-Jordan&redirected=true. Accessed 11 July 2024.

Vorkunov, Mike. "'He's Still a Player Inside': An Oral History of Michael Jordan's 13-Year Run with the Hornets." The Athletic, The New York Times, 25 Oct. 2023, www.nytimes.com/athletic/4989701/2023/10/25/michael-jordan-hornets-oral-history/. Accessed 11 July 2024.

Williams, Pat. Quotable Michael Jordan: Words of Wit, Wisdom, and Inspiration by and About Michael Jordan. TowleHouse, 2004.