Michael Jordan

• 1. Introduction

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  Michael Jeffrey Jordan was born on the 17th of February 1963, in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, and before he was done, he would hold every scoring record that mattered in professional basketball. But the numbers alone miss the strangeness of the story. Here was a teenager from Wilmington, North Carolina, who was cut from his high school varsity squad as a sophomore for being too short. Here was a college freshman who made the shot that won a national championship. Here was the man who walked away from the game at its peak, picked up a baseball bat, and tried to become a major leaguer. And here was the player who, after two retirements and a third act in Washington, made both free throws in the final game of his career while the opposing crowd chanted his name. How did a boy deemed too short at five feet eleven become the player Larry Bird once called "God disguised as Michael Jordan"? What drove him to retire in his prime, and what brought him back? And what does it mean that, decades after his last game, the NBA's Most Valuable Player award now bears his name?

• 2. From Wilmington to Chapel Hill

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  At Emsley A. Laney High School, Jordan's rejection from the varsity team as a sophomore became the engine of his ambition. He spent that year starring on the junior varsity squad, putting up some 40-point games, then grew four inches over the following summer and trained with a focus that would become his signature. By his senior year, he was averaging over 25 points per game and scored 30 at the 1981 McDonald's All-American Game.

  Jordan was recruited by programs including Duke, Syracuse, and Virginia, but in 1980 he accepted a scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he chose to major in cultural geography because of its connection to meteorology. He had considered a career as a meteorologist. Coach Dean Smith's system emphasized team play over individual stardom, an approach that would test Jordan's instincts throughout his college years.

  As a freshman, Jordan averaged 13.4 points per game on 53.4% shooting and was named ACC Freshman of the Year. Then came the moment that he later called the major turning point of his entire basketball career. In the 1982 NCAA Championship game against Georgetown, a team led by Patrick Ewing who would become a future NBA rival, Jordan made the game-winning jump shot. He was 19 years old.

  He returned to North Carolina to finish his degree in 1986, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in geography. But he had left after his junior year, departing following his second consensus All-American selection and after winning the Naismith and Wooden College Player of the Year awards in 1984.

• 3. The Rookie and the Freeze-Out

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  The Chicago Bulls selected Jordan with the third overall pick of the 1984 NBA draft. The first two picks went to Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Bowie. ESPN would later name Portland's choice of Bowie over Jordan the worst draft pick in North American professional sports history.

  Jordan made his NBA debut at Chicago Stadium on the 26th of October 1984, scoring 16 points. By November, the New York Times was calling him "the phenomenal rookie of the Bulls." By December, he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. By January, he was voted a starter in the All-Star Game by the fans, which is when the trouble started.

  Before the 1985 All-Star Game, a group of veteran players, reportedly led by Isiah Thomas, arranged what became known as a "freeze-out." Players refused to pass Jordan the ball. The episode did not derail him. He went on to win NBA Rookie of the Year. In his first season, he averaged 28.2 points per game and helped the Bulls improve from 27-55 to 38-44, qualifying for the playoffs for the first time since the 1980-81 season.

  The 1985-86 season ended early when Jordan broke his foot in the third game, missing 64 games. He returned for the playoffs and, on the 20th of April 1986 at Boston Garden, scored 63 points in a double-overtime loss to the Boston Celtics, breaking Elgin Baylor's single-game playoff scoring record. Bird, watching from the other bench, said it was like watching "God disguised as Michael Jordan." The Celtics swept the series.

• 4. The Pistons Wall

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  Jordan's 1986-87 season stands as one of the most statistically staggering in NBA history. He became only the second player after Wilt Chamberlain to score 3,000 points in a single season, averaging a league-high 37.1 points per game. He also became the first player in NBA history to record 200 steals and 100 blocked shots in a season.

  Yet the Bulls kept losing in the playoffs to the Detroit Pistons, a physical team whose defensive scheme became known as the "Jordan Rules." The scheme consisted of double and triple-teaming Jordan every time he touched the ball. In the 1988-89 season, Jordan averaged 32.5 points per game along with 8.0 rebounds and 8.0 assists. When coach Doug Collins moved him to point guard during that season, Jordan responded with 10 triple-doubles in 11 games. That same year, he delivered "The Shot," a buzzer-beater over Craig Ehlo in the fifth and deciding game of a first-round playoff series against Cleveland.

  The Pistons knocked out the Bulls for three consecutive seasons. The 1989-90 loss came despite Jordan scoring a career-high 69 points in a regular season game on the 28th of March 1990. Only after Phil Jackson, working with assistant coach Tex Winter, installed the triangle offense did the balance begin to shift. In his book Eleven Rings, Jackson recalled planning to ask Jordan to reduce his shot attempts so teammates could get more involved. In the documentary series The Last Dance, Jordan admitted he was initially reluctant.

• 5. Six Rings

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  In the 1990-91 season, the Bulls swept the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals and faced the Los Angeles Lakers in their first-ever Finals. They won the series in five games with a 15-2 playoff record. Perhaps the most talked-about single play came in Game 2, when Jordan switched the ball mid-air from his right hand to his left to avoid a block by Sam Perkins. Jordan won his first Finals MVP, averaged 31.2 points per game in the series, and cried while holding the trophy.

  The following season, in the 1992 Finals against the Portland Trail Blazers, Jordan scored a Finals-record 35 points in the first half of Game 1, including six three-pointers. After the sixth, he jogged back up the court shrugging. Broadcaster Marv Albert later recalled it as if Jordan was saying: "I can't believe I'm doing this." Jordan averaged 35.8 points per game in the series and won his second consecutive Finals MVP.

  The third title in 1993 came against the Phoenix Suns, with Jordan averaging a Finals-record 41.0 points per game across six games and scoring 40 or more points in four consecutive games. He became the first player in NBA history to win three consecutive Finals MVP awards.

  After Jordan returned from his first retirement in 1995, the Bulls set a then-record 72-10 regular season mark in 1995-96. Jordan won the regular season, All-Star Game, and Finals MVP awards that year, only the second player to accomplish the three-MVP sweep after Willis Reed in 1969-70. The 1997 championship produced "The Flu Game" against the Utah Jazz, when Jordan played through what he maintained was food poisoning, scoring 38 points and the game-winning three-pointer with 25 seconds remaining in a 90-88 win.

  The sixth title came on the 14th of June 1998, at the Delta Center in Utah. Trailing 86-83 with 41.9 seconds left, Jordan scored over Jazz defenders, then stole the ball from Karl Malone, then, with 5.2 seconds remaining, made a jumper over Jazz guard Bryon Russell. The Bulls won 87-86. Jordan averaged 33.5 points per game in the series, including 45 in Game 6. Game 6 holds the highest television rating of any game in NBA history.

• 6. Baseball and the Weight of Loss

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  On the 6th of October 1993, Jordan retired from basketball at 30 years old. He cited the loss of his desire to play. His father, James R. Jordan Sr., had been murdered on the 23rd of July 1993, carjacked at a highway rest area in Lumberton, North Carolina, by two teenagers named Daniel Green and Larry Martin Demery. His body, found in a South Carolina swamp, was not recovered until the 3rd of August. Green and Demery were sentenced to life imprisonment.

  In The Last Dance, Jordan said he retired due to physical and mental exhaustion. In his 1998 autobiography For the Love of the Game, he wrote that he had been thinking about retirement as early as the summer of 1992. The 1992 Olympics had added to his fatigue. His father had always envisioned him as a baseball player.

  On the 7th of February 1994, Jordan signed a Minor League Baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox. He reported to spring training in Sarasota, Florida, and was assigned to the Birmingham Barons, a Double-A affiliate. He batted .202 with three home runs, 51 runs batted in, and 30 stolen bases in 1994. His strikeout total led the team. He also appeared in the 1994 Arizona Fall League, batting .252 against top prospects.

  On the 1st of November 1994, while Jordan was playing baseball, the Bulls retired his number 23 in a ceremony that included the unveiling of a permanent sculpture called The Spirit outside the new United Center. Jordan returned to basketball in March 1995, issuing a two-word press release on the 18th of March: "I'm back."

• 7. After the Game

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  Jordan's departure from the court did not simplify his life. On the 7th of May 2003, Washington Wizards owner Abe Pollin fired him from his role as head of basketball operations, weeks after Jordan had retired as a player. Jordan later said he felt betrayed, and that he never would have returned to play had he known he would be let go.

  In June 2006, Jordan bought a minority stake in the Charlotte Bobcats, becoming the team's second-largest shareholder. In March 2010, the NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved his purchase of a controlling interest, making him the first former player and the league's only African-American majority owner at the time. In 2023, Jordan finalized the sale of his majority stake to Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall for approximately $3 billion, more than 10 times the $275 million he had paid. He retained a minority stake.

  In 2020, Jordan and NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin announced a Cup Series team, 23XI Racing, with Bubba Wallace as driver. In 2024, Tyler Reddick won the NASCAR Cup Series regular season championship, the team's first. Jordan, Hamlin, and the team sued NASCAR in October 2024 over charter agreements, a case settled on the 11th of December 2025.

  In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Jordan the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In September 2022, a jersey Jordan wore in the opening game of the 1998 NBA Finals sold for $10.1 million, the most expensive game-worn sports memorabilia in history. In December 2022, the NBA renamed its regular season MVP trophy in Jordan's honor.