Michael Jordan

• 1. The Cut From The Team

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  On a Tuesday in the summer of 1978, Michael Jordan stood on the basketball court at Laney High School in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was fifteen years old and measured five feet eleven inches tall. The varsity coach told him he was too short to play for the top team that year. Jordan did not argue or leave the gym. He went home and trained harder than anyone else before returning the next season. By his junior year, he had grown enough to make the roster as a starter. He averaged more than twenty-five points per game during those final two seasons of high school. His jersey number became twenty-three, a choice he made to honor his older brother Larry who wore twenty-three at the time.

• 2. The Shot That Changed Everything

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  In March of 1982, the North Carolina Tar Heels faced Georgetown University in the NCAA Championship game. Patrick Ewing led the Hoyas with a dominant presence inside the paint. With seconds remaining and the score tied, Jordan received the ball near the free-throw line. He drove toward the basket and released a jump shot that swished through the net just as the buzzer sounded. This single moment secured the national title for Dean Smith's team. Jordan later described this specific shot as the major turning point in his entire basketball career. He finished his college tenure averaging seventeen point seven points per game while shooting fifty-four percent from the field. He left Chapel Hill one year early to enter the professional draft in 1984.

• 3. The Third Pick And The Rookie Year

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  The Chicago Bulls selected Michael Jordan with the third overall pick in the 1984 NBA draft. Hakeem Olajuwon went first to Houston and Sam Bowie went second to Portland before Jordan was available. On the 26th of October 1984, he made his debut at Chicago Stadium and scored sixteen points against the New Jersey Nets. During his rookie season, he averaged twenty-eight point two points per game on fifty-one percent shooting. The Bulls improved their record from twenty-seven wins to thirty-eight wins and qualified for the postseason for the first time since 1981. Roy S. Johnson of The New York Times called him the phenomenal rookie of the Bulls in November. Jordan appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the headline A Star Is Born in December. Fans voted him an All-Star starter during that same rookie season.

• 4. The Pistons Roadblock

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  In the Eastern Conference Semifinals of the 1987, 88 season, the Detroit Pistons defeated the Bulls in five games. Isiah Thomas led a group of physical players known as the Bad Boys who used aggressive tactics to stop Jordan. The following year, the Pistons employed a strategy called the Jordan Rules which consisted of double and triple teaming him every time he touched the ball. This defensive scheme prevented the Bulls from advancing past the conference finals again until 1990. Jordan responded by averaging thirty-five points per game while also winning the Defensive Player of the Year award. He became the first player in NBA history to record two hundred steals and one hundred blocked shots in a single season. The Bulls finished with a fifty win season but lost to the Pistons once more in the Eastern Conference Finals.

• 5. The First Three-peat And The Triangle

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  Phil Jackson implemented the triangle offense system to counteract the Pistons' defense and other teams targeting Jordan. In the 1990, 91 season, the Bulls won their division for the first time in sixteen years and set a franchise record with sixty-one wins. They swept the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals before facing the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals. Jordan scored thirty-one point two points per game during that series and won his first NBA Finals MVP award. He cried while holding the trophy after securing the championship. The team repeated this success in 1992 and 1993 to become the first franchise to win three consecutive titles since the Boston Celtics in the late 1960s. Jordan averaged forty-one points per game during the 1993 Finals against Charles Barkley's Phoenix Suns.

• 6. The Murder And The Baseball Stint

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  On the 23rd of July 1993, James R. Jordan Sr. was murdered at a highway rest area in Lumberton, North Carolina by two teenagers who carjacked his Lexus. His body was dumped in a South Carolina swamp and not discovered until August 3. Three months later on the 6th of October 1993, Michael announced his retirement from basketball citing physical and mental exhaustion. He signed a Minor League Baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox on the 7th of February 1994. Jordan played for the Birmingham Barons batting .202 with three home runs and fifty-one runs batted in. He struck out one hundred fourteen times which led the team. The White Sox were owned by Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf who honored Jordan's basketball contract during these years. Jordan said he pursued baseball to fulfill the dream of his late father who always envisioned him as a Major League player.

• 7. I'm Back And The Second Dynasty

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  On the 18th of March 1995, Jordan sent a two-word press release stating I am back to announce his return to the NBA. He wore number forty-five initially before switching back to twenty-three after a game against Orlando. The Bulls finished the regular season with seventy-two wins and ten losses setting an all-time record broken only decades later. In the 1996, 97 Finals, Jordan scored thirty-eight points despite suffering from a stomach virus or food poisoning likely caused by pizza ordered the night before. This event became known as The Flu Game. He won his fifth Finals MVP award that year. The following season culminated in Game 6 of the 1998 Finals where Jordan stole the ball from Karl Malone and sank a jumper over Bryon Russell with five seconds remaining. This shot gave Chicago an eighty-seven to eighty-six lead and secured their sixth championship.