Michael Jordan 1963–

Professional basketball player

A Slow Starter

Talent, Desire, Success

Life in a Fishbowl

Personal Tragedy and Its Aftermath

Announced Retirement in October of 1993

Sources

Michael Jordan needs no introduction anywhere in the world. Prior to his retirement in 1993, he was one of the highest paid and certainly one of the best-known athletes in the history of organized sports. The intensely competitive guard for the Chicago Bulls dominated the National Basketball Association (NBA) for almost a decade, most notably in the Bulls’ three consecutive NBA championship years of 1991-93. Sports Illustrated contributor Jack McCallum called Jordan “unquestionably the most famous athlete on the planet and one of its most famous citizens of any kind,” a sportsman who “has surpassed every standard by which we gauge the fame of an athlete and, with few exceptions, has handled the adulation with a preternatural grace and ease that have cut across lines of race, age and gender.” Gentleman’s Quarterly correspondent David Breskin likewise characterized Jordan as “the most admired, idolized and moneyed team-sport hero in the entire American-hero business.” Breskin added: “For some folks he has come to represent America—as in, we may not make cars or televisions too well, but we turn out a helluva Michael Jordan.”

Even those people who have never watched a moment of professional basketball recognize Jordan. The athlete has made a fortune in commercial endorsements of products such as Nike’s Air Jordan footwear, Wheaties cereal, and McDonald’s hamburgers. The combination of Jordan’s natural charms and his extraordinary basketball prowess have brought the likable star an estimated $35 million a year in revenues. As David Halberstam put it in Sports Illustrated, Jordan is the first super-athlete of the satellite age, the first professional player to benefit on a grand scale from a global audience for his talents and his products. “Jordan has created a kind of fame that exceeds sports,” wrote Halberstam. “He is both athlete and entertainer. He plays in the age of the satellite to an audience vastly larger than was possible in the past and is thus the first great athlete of the wired world.”

A Slow Starter

Michael Jordan was born February 17, 1963, in Brooklyn, New York, while his father was stationed there briefly on business. The fourth of five children, Michael has two brothers and two sisters. While he was still young, his family moved back to their hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, where his father worked as a supervisor at a

At a Glance…

Born Michael Jeffrey Jordan, February 17, 1963, in Brooklyn, NY; raised in Wilmington, NC; son of James (a former equipment supervisor for General Electric and a retail business owner) and Delores (Peoples) Jordan; married Juanita Vanoy, 1989; children: Jeffrey, Marcus, Jasmine. Education: Attended University of North Carolina, 1981-84.

Professional basketball player, 1984-93. Drafted third in first round of 1984 National Basketball Association (NBA) draft by Chicago Bulls; member of Chicago Bulls, 1984-93. Also endorses a number of products/corporations in television commercials, including Nike, Wheaties, Gatorade, Wilson Sporting Goods, Hanes, Ball Park Franks, and McDonald’s; owner of Chicago eatery Michael Jordan’s: The Restaurant. Founder, Michael Jordan Foundation. Author of text to the photographic biography Rare Air: Michael on Michael, published by Collins Publishers San Francisco, November 4, 1993.

Selected awards: Recipient of gold medal for basketball at Olympic Games, 1984 and 1992; named NBA Rookie of the Year, 1985; member of NBA Eastern Conference All-Star Team, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992; NBA scoring leader 1984, 1986-93; named NBA Defensive Player of the Year, 1988; named NBA League Most Valuable Player, 1988, 1991, 1992; named “Sportsman of the Year” by Sports Illustrated, 1991; named NBA Finals Most Valuable Player, 1991, 1992, 1993.

Addresses: c/o The Chicago Bulls, One Magnificent Mile, 980 North Michigan Ave., Suite 1600, Chicago, IL 60611. Publisher —Collins Publishers San Francisco, 50 Osgood PI., Suite 400, San Francisco, CA 94133.

General Electric plant. Everyone in the Jordan family worked hard—everyone, that is, except Michael. “I could not keep regular hours. It just wasn’t me,” Jordan told Gentleman’s Quarterly. Michael threw all of his energies into sports, playing baseball and basketball with the same intensity that his parents and siblings devoted to their work. He said that he began playing with his tongue sticking out because his father would stick his tongue out whenever concentrating on a task.

Neither of Jordan’s parents were tall, nor were his brothers and sisters beyond average height. Michael himself seemed destined to be short, an unlikely candidate for the professional basketball career he dreamed about. In backyard games with his friends and brothers, he tried to compensate for his height by playing harder; thus was born his fierce desire to win, especially against the odds.

As a freshman at Wilmington’s Laney High School, Jordan tried out for the varsity basketball team and was cut. The next year he was cut again soon after the season began, while his best friend, Leroy Smith, made the team. Jordan told Reader’s Digest that when he discovered he had been dropped from the varsity again, “I went through the day numb. After school, I hurried home, closed the door to my room and cried so hard. It was all I wanted—to play on that team.” He added: “It’s probably good that it happened. It made me know what disappointment felt like. And I knew that I didn’t want that feeling ever again.”

Between his sophomore and junior years of high school, Jordan added several inches to his height. Almost overnight he grew from five feet eleven inches to six feet three inches. By the time he was a senior he stood at six feet six. Needless to say, he finally earned his berth on the varsity squad and—with his burning ambitions in tow—he became one of the most widely-recruited high school athletes in the country. He accepted a full scholarship to the University of North Carolina. “Everybody in Wilmington expected me to go to North Carolina, sit on the bench for four years, then go back to Wilmington and work at the local gas station,” he told Gentleman’s Quarterly.

Talent, Desire, Success

Michael Jordan never warmed the bench at the University of North Carolina. He was a starter for the Tar Heels from the first game of his freshman year. He became a national celebrity later that season when he sank a winning fifteen-foot jump shot in the final seconds of the 1982 NCAA Championship. Teammates and fans nicknamed him “Superman” and “Last Shot,” and he was voted Atlantic Coast Conference rookie of the year.

To this day Jordan remembers his years at the University of North Carolina fondly. He had a special rapport with Tar Heels coach Dean Smith, and many of the friends he made there are still his closest companions today. He spent two more seasons on the UNC team and was named Ail-American in 1983 and 1984 and Sporting News college player of the year in 1983. After a disappointing 1983-84 campaign in which he led the Tar Heels to an Atlantic Coast Conference championship but bowed in the NCAA tournament, Jordan was named co-captain of the 1984 United States Olympic basketball team. In Los Angeles in the summer of 1984, Jordan was one of the leaders on an Olympic team that gracefully captured the gold medal.

Against his parents’ wishes, Jordan decided to go professional in 1984. He was drafted third in the first round of the 1984 NBA draft by the struggling Chicago Bulls. The Bulls were limping through a decade of lackluster performance and were searching for an athlete who could galvanize the team as a player and a leader. Jordan fit the bill perfectly. In his first professional season he led the NBA in points and was chosen rookie of the year. Even though the Bulls still continued to struggle, attendance at home games leaped 87 percent as word of the rookie phenomenon spread. Nor was Jordan merely a local hero. In every NBA city, attendance rose dramatically when the Chicago Bulls came to town.

A foot injury sidelined Jordan for most of the 1985-86 campaign. At the very end of the season he convinced the Bulls’ coach and owner to allow him to play. With his help the team surged to win a trip to the playoffs, in which the Bulls met the Boston Celtics with their popular star, Larry Bird. The Celtics had little trouble defeating the Bulls in the playoff series, but Jordan scored 49 points in Game One and 63 points in Game Two. An astounded Larry Bird quipped that the new star in Chicago was “God disguised as Michael Jordan.”

Jordan combined several highly regarded American commodities: good looks, phenomenal athletic ability, and—perhaps most importantly—a clean, scandal-free image. Advertisers were quick to court the young star for commercial endorsements of products. One of the first companies to seek Jordan’s help was Nike, makers of athletic clothing and footwear. For Jordan the company designed a whole new line of shoes, “Air Jordans,” taking their name from the player’s uncanny ability to hang four feet above the ground as he took shots during games. The Air Jordan line put an end to Nike’s sagging sneaker sales, earning an estimated $130 million in the first year of sales. Jordan pocketed a share of the profits for this venture. Other endorsement contracts were signed with McDonald’s, Chevrolet, Coco-Cola, and Wheaties cereal, as well as numerous smaller businesses in the Chicago area.

Life in a Fishbowl

Many athletes have found that their on-court skills have been eroded when the demands of commercial endorsements and the crush of fame descend upon them. Jordan only seemed to get stronger. As the Bulls were rebuilt around him with a group of hungry young players, he continued to lead the NBA in scoring and often landed on the all-defensive first team as well. Breskin wrote: “The truly revolutionary aspect of Jordan’s brilliance is that although he possesses the most extravagant, high-cholesterol game in the history of the sport, it’s as controlled as it is wild and as thoughtful as it is free. There has never been such a spectacular player who was also so disciplined, so fundamentally sound. There has never been such a gifted offensive player who worked so hard, and so well, on the defensive end of the court.”

Few questioned Jordan’s ability, but as the 1980s progressed, naysayers pointed out that basketball’s newest superstar was unable to take his team to the NBA finals. One shadow that remained over the athlete’s career was the notion that great players who never win a title are somehow less great than those who do—that truly brilliant players will wring the best possible performance out of mediocre teammates. Jordan was saddled with this burden of proving himself as the Bulls were eliminated at various steps in the playoffs throughout the remainder of the 1980s. A particularly frustrating opposing team in this regard was the Detroit Pistons, who devised a whole scheme to undermine Jordan’s productiveness during games.

Gradually the personnel around Jordan improved, however, and the Bulls began to assert themselves as a team. In 1991 the long-awaited NBA championship was finally achieved in a four-games-to-one victory over the Los Angeles Lakers. McCallum noted in Sports Illustrated: “To many NBA observers, the Bulls had to win it all before Jordan could conclusively prove that he was more than a high-flying sideshow or a long, loud ring of the cash register. They did. And so he did.” Any questions about Jordan’s greatness were dispelled in the 1991-92 and 1992-93 seasons as the Bulls became the first team in thirty years to win three consecutive NBA Championships. In 1992 the Bulls defeated the Portland Trail Blazers, in 1993 the Phoenix Suns. Jordan played almost nonstop in each and every championship series. Not only did he dominate the NBA, he also managed to lead the first-ever United States Olympic men’s basketball team manned by professionals. The “Dream Team” easily grabbed the gold medal in the 1992 Olympic Games—just weeks after Jordan’s Bulls had won a second NBA championship.

After the Bulls beat the Suns in six games for the 1993 NBA championship, McCallum asked in Sports Illustrated: “Is Michael Jeffrey Jordan simply the best basketball player in the history of the planet?…You know the answer to that question: yes. A resounding yes.” Jordan made history as the only athlete ever named NBA Finals Most Valuable Player three consecutive times. He is the only player besides Wilt Chamberlain ever to score 3,000 points in a season and the only player in history to score 50 or more points in five playoff games.

Everything has its price, though. For Jordan, the adoration of basketball fans worldwide and an unprecedented level of fame for an athlete brought a multitude of problems. Negative publicity began in the 1980s when teenagers began to use violent means to obtain Air Jordan sneakers costing in excess of $100 a pair. More recently Jordan has had to defend himself against accusations of compulsive gambling on golf and card games. Twice the NBA has investigated Jordan’s gambling activities. In 1991 he admitted betting more than $50,000 on golf games played with James “Slim” Bouler, who has since been convicted of selling cocaine. During the 1993 NBA Finals, a San Diego businessman named Richard Esquinas alleged in a self-published book that Jordan owed him $1.25 million in the wake of a ten-day golf gambling binge. Jordan claimed that he never bet anything near a million dollars on a golf game and that he merely gambles as recreation. Both times the NBA supported Jordan, but some critics claim that the investigations were “soft” because Jordan was such a powerful box office draw in the league.

The implications of any lasting scandal were obvious: Jordan could have lost his lucrative endorsement contracts while still being hounded mercilessly by the press and his fans. Since 1985 Jordan endured great restrictions on his movements—he was and is recognized, and mobbed, everywhere he goes in public. Following the gambling uproar, he faced the task of defending his reputation against those who would characterize him as out of control. McCallum is one reporter who has noticed the change wrought by this lifestyle that is akin to living in a fishbowl: “Gone is much of the spontaneous joy that Jordan brought to the game in 1984, when he entered the league with a head of hair, a pair of North Carolina shorts beneath his Bulls uniform and a boyish appetite for fame and glory.…somewhere amid all the adulation and pressure, a spark went out of Jordan—one that, it seems, will never return.”

Personal Tragedy and Its Aftermath

The Jordan family faced tragedy in the summer of 1993 when Michael’s father, James, was brutally murdered in North Carolina. Jordan fought tears and tried to dodge the press during his father’s funeral and the subsequent police investigation that uncovered two teenaged suspects and an apparent motive of car theft. His father’s untimely death was yet another severe blow to Jordan, who had for some time contemplated retiring from the NBA in 1996. Just months before the murder, Jordan told People that he wanted to put an end to the strange, isolated existence he leads in an effort to avoid the media glare and the demands of flocks of fans. “I feel I’m at the stage of my career when it’s tough to move up,” he said. ‘I can only maintain and be consistent. I’ve set such high standards. You lose a bit of the joy as you move on.”

A bit of the joy may be gone for Jordan, but no amount of personal pain can erase the greatness of his career. As Richard Stengel observed in Time magazine in 1991, “All the commercial hype and publicity fade away when he does play, for Michael Jordan is the artwork and the artist, the poem and the poet. He reinvents the sport every time he rises—and rises—into the air.” Stengel concluded in the same article: “Michael Jordan is now his own greatest competition. When you make the miraculous routine, the merely superb becomes ordinary.”

Announced Retirement in October of 1993

Jordan had often referred to basketball as his “refuge,” but the combined toll of his father’s brutal murder, the media scrutiny surrounding his own gambling debts, the continuing pressures of his megastardom, and his professed feelings of having nothing left to prove on the basketball court are believed to have played a part in his decision to retire from the game at the age of 30. At a press conference held October 6, 1993, Jordan officially confirmed the rumors of his retirement from professional basketball, stating: “I’ve always stressed that when I lose the sense of motivation and the sense to prove something as a basketball player, it’s time to leave.” An Associated Press wire report released the evening before the news conference quoted him as saying: “It’s time for me to move on to something else. I know a lot of people are going to be shocked by this decision and probably won’t understand. But…I’m at peace with myself.”

In a photobiography titled Rare Air: Michael on Michael —which was completed during the summer of 1993, but published after the player announced his retirement—Jordan foreshadowed his decision to withdraw from the spotlight while still at the height of his career: “When I leave the game,” he wrote, “I’ll leave on top. That’s the only way I’ll walk away. I don’t want to leave after my feet have slowed, my hands aren’t as quick, or my eyesight isn’t as sharp. I don’t want people to remember me that way. I want people to remember me playing exactly the kind of game I’m capable of playing right now. Nothing less.”

Yet, as Mark Starr reported in Newsweek, Jordan still has the option to “unretire.” “I’m not going to close that door,” he said. “I don’t believe in never.” But as of the fall of 1993, Jordan felt it best to hang up his Bulls uniform, spend more time with his family, and expand his business ties. “I’m sure there are fans who think they know what it’s like being a professional athlete,” he wrote in Rare Air. “But I’m quite sure they don’t know just how different our lives are and how it impacts our wives and children.… I thought this was the perfect time in my career to give people an inside look at my life.”

In January of 1994, Jordan provoked widespread speculation in the sports world after it was reported that he would attempt a career with professional baseball’s Chicago White Sox. Jordan had played baseball through high school, but some critics doubted that he could make the jump to the major league game as a 30 year old. Nonetheless, Jordan’s agent confirmed in Sports Illustrated that his client had been taking batting practice for several hours a day. Jordan has unquestionably achieved greatness on the basketball court, but it appears that baseball may become the new challenge for one of the best, and best-known, athletes in the world.

Sources

Books

Greene, Bob, Hang Time, Doubleday, 1992.

Jordan, Michael, Rare Air: Michael on Michael, photographed by Walter Iooss, Jr., edited by Mark Vancil, Collins Publishers San Francisco, 1993.

Periodicals

Associated Press wire report, October 5, 1993.

Ebony, December 1993, pp. 128-38.

Esquire, November 1990, pp. 138-216.

Forbes, May 25, 1992, p. 168.

Gentleman’s Quarterly, March 1989, pp. 319-97.

Newsweek, May 29, 1989, pp. 58-60; December 4, 1989, pp. 80-81; June 14, 1993, pp. 72-74; August 23, 1993, p. 60; August 30, 1993, p. 59; October 18, 1993, pp. 65-70; October-November 1993 Collector’s Issue (devoted to Jordan).

People, May 17, 1993, pp. 82-87.

Publishers Weekly, July 26, 1993, p. 13.

Reader’s Digest, February 1993, pp. 79-83.

Shutterbug, December 1993, pp. 52-55.

Sports Illustrated, December 23, 1991, pp. 66-81; June 7, 1993, pp. 19-21; June 28, 1993, pp. 17-21; August 23, 1993, p. 11; October 18, 1993, pp. 28-34; January 17, 1994, pp. 32-35.

Time, June 24, 1991, p. 47; October 18, 1993, pp. 114-16.

Upscale, January 1994, pp. 28-32.

Michael Jordan was profiled on Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, CBS-TV, July 15, 1993; an interview with Jordan conducted by Oprah Winfrey for Oprah, was first broadcast on ABC-TV on October 29, 1993.

—Mark Kram

Michael Jordan

1963-

American basketball player

Michael Jordan is considered by many to be the greatest basketball player in the history of the game, even by some to be the greatest player of any sport. As Jerry Sloan, the coach of the Utah Jazz told the Daily News of Jordan, "I think everybody knows how he should be remembered, as the greatest player that has ever played." A two-time Olympic gold medal winner with the U.S. basketball team, Jordan distinguished himself in a 15-season career with the NBA by, among many other achievements, leading the league in scoring more seasons (10) than any other player in history, and by setting a record for the most consecutive games scoring more than nine points (842 games). He started his career with the NBA during the 1984-85 season, playing as a guard for the Chicago Bulls until 1993, when announced the first of three retirements. He went back to the Bulls in 1994-95, "retired" again in 1999, and went back to the game, this time with the Washington Wizards for the 2001-02 and 2002-03 seasons. In 2002, at the age of 39, he announced his intention to quit playing for good after the 2002-03 season.

Cut from His High School Team

Michael Jeffrey Jordan was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1963. He was the youngest of four boys born to James and Deloris Jordan. James Jordan was the son of a share cropper from rural North Carolina, and he was in Brooklyn to attend a school that trained employees of General Electric. Jordan's mother, Deloris, was a homemaker until her children were old enough to attend school, and then she became a bank clerk.

When Jordan was about seven years old, in 1970, his family moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, the town he would later consider to be his hometown. He began playing basketball at an early age, often with his older

brother Larry. "When I was younger," Jordan said on his Web site, "my motivation came from wanting to beat my brother. This inspired my extremely competitive nature."

As a freshman in high school, Jordan joined his school basketball team. It was on his high school team that Jordan chose the jersey number he was later to make famous as a pro, number 23. When later asked why he chose that number, he replied to the Associated Press, "I wanted to wear No. 45 in high school, but my older brother (Larry) wore that number. So I decided to go with half of 45, which is actually 22½." Jordan at first had trouble standing out on the school team. In fact, only a year after joining the team, as a tenth grader, he was cut from the varsity team. But this only pushed him to work harder at perfecting his game. As he later said on his Web site, "I think that not making the Varsity team drove me to really work at my game, and also taught me that if you set goals, and work hard to achieve them—the hard work can pay off."

"That Boy Is Devastating"

Jordan began to distinguish himself on the junior varsity team, and was soon averaging more than 20 points a game. "I remember going to Laney High on a Friday night, Michael's junior year, and now he'd grown to, maybe 6 foot 1," Jordan's uncle Gene Jordan later recalled to Kevin Paul Dupont in the Boston Globe. "Before the game he's telling me, 'Watch me, I'm going to slam dunk three balls tonight. You'll see. I'm going to slam three.' And I'm there saying, 'Boy, who you kiddin'? You can't slam no ball.' Well, he didn't slam three, but he sure as hell slammed two. And I told my brother that night, 'Hey, that boy is devastating.'"

Even so, Jordan was not on the lists of most college basketball team recruiters. He was noticed by recruiters at the University of North Carolina, however, and there he went to college, playing guard on the school team under coach Dean Smith. True success touched Jordan for the first time at the NCAA tournament in which his team played against the Georgetown Hoyas. Jordan scored the three of the last five winning shots to bring North Carolina its first title in a quarter of a century. "I've never seen anybody pick up the game so fast," one of his former UNC teammates and later Lakers player told Filip Bondy in the Daily News years later. "Michael just doesn't repeat mistakes."

After his success at the NCAA championship, Jordan became nationally famous, and a celebrity in North Carolina. He even landed on the cover of the Chapel Hill telephone book. Next came his selection to the U.S. team in the Olympic Games, played in Los Angeles in 1984. Team U.S.A. took home the gold medal. Jordan graduated college in 1985 with a bachelor's degree in cultural geography. After college, Jordan was picked up as the first choice in a draft lottery by the Chicago Bulls.

When Jordan signed on with the Bulls, he began a marketing relationship with Nike that was to last throughout his career; Nike released a sport shoe called Air Jordans. As for his performance as a player, he was soon unrivaled as an unstoppable force. As his coach, Kevin Loughery later said to Bondy in the Daily News, "If I put him with the starters, they win. If I put him with the second team, they win.… No matter what I do with Michael, his team wins."

Chronology

Related Biography: Father James Jordan

James Jordan was in the habit of driving long distances overnight, stopping only for brief naps in his car, rather than staying in hotels. "Oh, I know he's stopped in Lumberton before," his brother, Gene Jordan, told Kevin Paul Dupont in the Boston Globe after James's death. "I'm sure he's pulled over at that exact spot before. A hotel room? That wasn't James, uhuh. After Michael's fame and everything, people used to ask him, 'Are you going to get a bodyguard? He'd laugh at that. Stopping at the side of the road was nothing for my brother. He didn't think anything of it. He figured he didn't have an enemy in the world."

Not enemies, but thieves took James Jordan's life as he napped in his car on a Lumberton, North Carolina roadside in the early morning hours of July 23, 1993. James Jordan was on his way home from the funeral of a former coworker at the General Electric plant where he used to work. After the killing shot to the chest, the thieves took off in James Jordan's car, later stripping it, and then dumping Jordan's body in a nearby creek, where it was found a week and a half later. Jordan would have turned 57 less than two weeks after the day he died. "The world's lost a good man," Gene Jordan told Dupont.

James Raymond Jordan was born on July 31, 1936 in rural North Carolina, the first child born to sharecropper William Jordan and his wife Rosa Bell Jordan. He began a career at General Electric in 1967, moving up to become a parts department manager. He retired from GE in the late 1980s, at which time the Jordan family moved from Wilmington, North Carlolina, where Michael Jordan grew up, to the suburbs of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Those who knew both James and Michael Jordan noted that Michael was very much like his father. Both had shaved heads, and both stuck their tongues out when concentrating on a difficult task—in Michael's case, when lining up a shot. Their handwriting was alike enough that many people couldn't tell them apart. Proud supporters of Michael Jordan's basketball playing from the beginning, James Jordan and his wife, Michael's mother Deloris, never missed a game Michael played in during his time at the University of North Carolina.

James Jordan was buried alongside his grandfather and parents in the graveyard of the Rockfish African Methodist Episcopal Church in Teachey, North Carolina. His tombstone reads simply, as reported by Dupont, "James Jordan, 1936-1993."

Jordan was slowed at the beginning of 1985-86 season, when he suffered a stress fracture in his foot. Nevertheless, in 1986, he scored 63 points in a playoff game against the Celtics. In 1988, he was named NBA Defensive Player of the Year, leading the NBA in steals. He also earned MVP honors at the 1988 All-Star Game, held that year in Chicago. Another gold medal at the Olympics followed in 1992 when he again played on U.S. Olympic Team. By 1993, Jordan led the NBA in scoring, and been named the NBA's Most Valuable Player 3 times. He was also earning $30 million a year, not including millions of dollars more he earned endorsing products.

Tragedy Strikes

In the summer of 1993, Jordan's high-flying career came to a crashing halt with an event that was to forever change his life. In the very early morning hours of July 23, 1993, Jordan's father, James Jordan, was making a long drive from the North Carolina coast, coming back from a friend's funeral, when he stopped on a roadside in Lumberton, North Carolina. There he hoped to grab a few minutes of rest before driving the last 130 miles home. But it was not to be. He was set upon by a pair of robbers, shot once in the chest, and killed. The 18-year-old murderers did not know who their victim was; they wanted nothing more than his car and whatever valuables it might contain. They stripped his car, and dumped his body in a creek near where they shot him, and there he was found 11 days later.

After the death of his father, the steam went out of Jordan's career. "When my father died," he explained to Bondy in the Daily News "there was a different emphasis on everything." Jordan no longer felt the same fire to play basketball. He announced his retirement, and then went into seclusion. "There's nothing left to prove," he told Filip Bondy in the New York Daily News.

Back in the Game

After a brief attempt to start a baseball career, Jordan roared back from retirement in 1995, again playing for the Bulls. His first season back, he was named the NBA's Most Valuable Player. In 1996, he was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. He was named the NBA's Most Valuable Player again in 1997. In 1999, he "retired" again at 36 years old but stayed in the game as an owner and executive when he became part owner of the Washington Wizards in 2000 and director of basketball operations for the team.

Jordan, however, found it impossible to stay off the court. He was 38 years old when he announced the end of his second retirement, saying that he would play for the Wizards. NBA rules required that he sell his ownership stake in the Wizards before playing for the team. He also had to give up his management position with the Wizards to avoid a conflict of interest created by being both a manager and a player.

Space Jam

In 1996, at the height of Michael Jordan's fame and popularity, Warner Bros. Released a feature film that featured Jordan as a live-action character in a cartoon world. Actually, he wasn't a character at all; he just played himself along side such cartoon notables as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

Directed by Joe Pytka, and featuring the voices of, among others, Billy West and Danny Devito, Space Jam was Jordan's first feature film appearance, and a rather unusual one at that. The film features a tongue-in-cheek treatment of Jordan and his career as a superstar and a pure fantasy plot involving a parallel cartoon universe. When a group of Looney Tunes cartoon stars, including Bugs and Daffy, are kidnapped by some evil aliens, the cartoon characters hatch a plot to free themselves using the basketball talents of Michael Jordan., which he displays to good effect in the film's finale.

The film's animators smoothly combined live-action footage with hand-drawn and computer-generated animations, allowing the cartoon characters to travel from their cartoon universe to ours, and to pull Jordan from our universe into theirs. Space Jam, declared Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times, "is a happy marriage of good ideas—three films for the price of one, giving us a comic treatment of the career adventures of Michael Jordan, crossed with Looney Tunes cartoon and some showbiz warfare…. The result is delightful, a family movie in the best sense (whichmeans the adults will enjoy it, too)."

Awards and Accomplishments

Before Jordan could play again, he had to get back in shape, shedding 28 pounds, and undergoing a training regimen that included practicing with increasingly experienced

basketball players. As he said on his Web site: "It was definitely tougher to come back…than I had expected. After taking time off the sport, I had to work much harder to get my body back into shape. My body is also a lot older than it used to be…that that's ok. I came back for the love of the game.…"

Jordan stepped onto the court as a player once again in the 2001-02 season, but after a knee injury requiring surgery forced him to miss 20 games the following season, he again announced his retirement. "At the end of this season, I'm not looking to enter another contract," he told the Washington Post 's Steve Wyche in November, 2002. "Right now I want to finish this year out and hopefully fulfill my obligations and let this team take its own course." He also indicated that he would resume his managerial role with the Wizards, and other sources reported that he planned to repurchase the ownership stake in the team that he had given up in order to become a player.

Jordan is married to Juanita Jordan. They have two sons, Jeffrey Michael and Marcus James, and a daughter, Jasmine Mikail. His leisure pursuits include shopping. "I am a huge shopper," Jordan said on his Web site, "although it is hard for me to go to malls and stores since I am easily recognized. Therefore, I do a lot of my shopping through catalogues. I love shopping in New York City and some stores will even open on their off hours for me." Jordan also enjoys playing golf. In fact, he said on his Web site, "When I'm not on the court, you can probably find me on the golf course. However, I am a total hack! For the most part it is a great mental sport that allows me to relax and get away."

Jordan is also involved in many business ventures and charities not related to basketball. Among them, a chain of restaurants located in Chicago, New York, Chapel Hill, and in Connecticut. Among the charities he supports are Make-A-Wish, Ronald McDonald House, and the Boys & Girls Clubs. "It is very important for me to give back to others," he explains on his Web site. "My wife and I also give to many local charities which benefit children."

Career Statistics

After finally retiring as a player, Jordan looked forward to spending more time with his family "as well as trying to live for the moment and enjoy each day as it comes," he said on his Web site. He also planned to play a lot of golf.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Periodicals

Bondy, Filip. "Out of This World: In Redefining Greatness, Michael Jordan Made a Lasting Impact on an Entire Generation." Daily News (January 13, 1999): Special, 2.

DeShazier, John. "Rare Air; Jordan Soared to Unforeseen Heights, Standing Head and shoulders Above the Rest in the NBA." Times-Picayune (October 31, 1999): C16.

Dupont, Kevin Paul. "Cold Blood in Carolina; Family, Friends and Townspeople Try to Make Sense out of a Senseless Killing." Boston Globe (August 29, 1993): Sports, 47.

"Jordan Stuns Students at his Prep Alma Mater." Chicago Sun-Times (November 16, 1993): Sports, 1.

Wyche, Steve. "Jordan Says This Will be Final Season." Washington Post (November 29, 2002): D1.

Wyche, Steve. "Jordan Will Return, Play for Wizards." Washington Post (September 24, 2001): D1.

Other

"Biography for Michael Jordan." Internet Movie Database. http://us.imdb.com/Bio?Jordan,%20Michael. (December 6, 2002).

"Michael Jordan—One on One." Michael Jordan Official Website. http://www.sportsline.com/u/jordan/2001/oneonone/index.htm. (December 6, 2002).

"Michael Jordan—The Player." Michael Jordan Official Website. http://www.sportsline.com/u/jordan/2001/player/index.htm. (December 6, 2002).

"Michael Jordan Player Info." NBA.com. http://www.nba.com/playerfile/michael_jordan/?nav=page. (December 6, 2002).

"Space Jam." Suntimes.com. http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/1996/11/111505.html. (December 6, 2002).

"Space Jam (1996)." RottenTomatoes.com. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/SpaceJam-1073294/about.php. (December 6, 2002).

Sketch by Michael Belfiore

Michael Jordan 1963–

Professional basketball player

A Slow Starter

Talent, Desire, Success

Life in a Fishbowl

Personal Tragedy and Its Aftermath

Announced Retirement in October of 1993

Sources

Michael Jordan needs no introduction anywhere in the world. Prior to his retirement in 1998, he was one of the highest paid and certainly one of the best-known athletes in the history of organized sports. The intensely competitive guard for the Chicago Bulls dominated the National Basketball Association (NBA) for over a decade, leading his team to six national championships in just eight years in the 1990s. Sports Illustrated contributor Jack McCallum called Jordan “unquestionably the most famous athlete on the planet and one of its most famous citizens of any kind,” a sportsman who “has surpassed every standard by which we gauge the fame of an athlete and, with few exceptions, has handled the adulation with a preternatural grace and ease that have cut across lines of race, age and gender.” Gentleman’s Quarterly correspondent David Breskin likewise characterized Jordan as “the most admired, idolized and moneyed team-sport hero in the entire American-hero business.” Breskin added: “For some folks he has come to represent America—as in, we may not make cars or televisions too well, but we turn out a helluva Michael Jordan.”

Even those people who have never watched a moment of professional basketball recognize Jordan. The athlete has made a fortune in commercial endorsements of products such as Nike’s Air Jordan footwear, Wheaties cereal, and McDonald’s hamburgers. The combination of Jordan’s natural charm and his extraordinary basketball prowess have brought the likable star an estimated $35 million a year in revenues. As David Halberstam put it in Sports Illustrated, Jordan is the first super-athlete of the satellite age, the first professional player to benefit on a grand scale from a global audience for his talents and his products. “Jordan has created a kind of fame that exceeds sports,” wrote Halberstam. “He is both athlete and entertainer. He plays in the age of the satellite to an audience vastly larges than was possible in the past and is thus the first great athlete of the wired world.”

A Slow Starter

Michael Jordan was born February 17, 1963, in Brooklyn, New York, while his father was stationed there briefly on business. The fourth of five children, Michael has two brothers and two sisters. While he was still

At a Glance…

Born Michael Jeffrey Jordan, February 17, 1963, in Brooklyn, NY; raised in Wilmington, NC; son of James (a former equipment supervisor for General Electric and a retail business owner) and Delores (Peoples) Jordan; married Juanita Vanoy, 1989; children: Jeffrey, Marcus, Jasmine. Education: Attended University of North Carolina, 1981-84.

Career: Professional basketball player, 1984-93, 1995-98. Drafted third in first round of 1984 National Basketball Association (NBA) draft by Chicago Bulls; member of Chicago Bulls, 1984-93, 1995-98; minor-league baseball player, Birmingham Barons, 1994-95; also endorses a number of products/corporations in television commercials, including Nike, Wheaties, Gatorade, Wilson Sporting Goods, Hanes, Ball Park Franks, and McDonald’s; owner of Chicago eatery Michael Jordan’s; The Restaurant; founder, Michael Jordan Foundation; author of text to the photographic biography Rare Air: Michael on Michael, published by Collins Publishers San Francisco, November 4, 1993.

Selected awards: Recipient of gold medal for basketball at Olympic Games, 1984, 1992, 1996; named NBA Rookie of the Year, 1985; member of NBA Eastern Conference All-Star Team, 1985, 1987-93, 1996-98; NBA scoring leader 1984, 1986-93; named NBA Defensive Player of the Year, 1988; named NBA League Most Valuable Player, 1988, 1991, 1992, 1996; named “Sportsman of the Year” by Sports Illustrated, 1991; named NBA Finals Most Valuable Player, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995; selected as one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history, 1996; Sporting News, number one on list of 100 Most Powerful People in Sports, 1997.

Addresses: Publisher —Collins Publishers San Francisco, 50 Osgood PI., Suite 400, San Francisco, CA 94133.

young, his family moved back to their hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, where his father worked as a supervisor at a General Electric plant. Everyone in the Jordan family worked hard—everyone, that is, except Michael. “I could not keep regular hours. It just wasn’t me,” Jordan told Gentleman’s Quarterly. Michael threw all of his energies into sports, playing baseball and basketball with the same intensity that his parents and siblings devoted to their work. He said that he began playing with his tongue sticking out because his father would stick his tongue out whenever concentrating on a task.

Neither of Jordan’s parents were tall, nor were his brothers and sisters beyond average height. Michael himself seemed destined to be short, an unlikely candidate for the professional basketball career he dreamed about. In backyard games with his friends and brothers, he tried to compensate for his height by playing harder; thus was born his fierce desire to win, especially against the odds.

As a freshman at Wilmington’s Laney High School, Jordan tried out for the varsity basketball team and was cut. The next year he was cut again soon after the season began, while his best friend, Leroy Smith, made the team. Jordan told Reader’s Digest that when he discovered he had been dropped from the varsity again, “I went through the day numb. After school, I hurried home, closed the door to my room and cried so hard. It was all I wanted—to play on that team.” He added: “It’s probably good that it happened. It made me know what disappointment felt like. And I knew that I didn’t want that feeling ever again.”

Between his sophomore and junior years of high school, Jordan added several inches to his height. Almost overnight he grew from five feet eleven inches to six feet three inches. By the time he was a senior he stood at six feet six. Needless to say, he finally earned his berth on the varsity squad and—with his burning ambitions in tow—he became one of the most widely-recruited high school athletes in the country. He accepted a full scholarship to the University of North Carolina. “Everybody in Wilmington expected me to go to North Carolina, sit on the bench for four years, then go back to Wilmington and work at the local gas station,” he told Gentleman’s Quarterly.

Talent, Desire, Success

Michael Jordan never warmed the bench at the University of North Carolina. He was a starter for the Tar Heels from the first game of his freshman year. He became a national celebrity later that season when he sank a winning fifteen-foot jump shot in the final seconds of the 1982 NCAA Championship. Teammates and fans nicknamed him “Superman” and “Last Shot,” and he was voted Atlantic Coast Conference rookie of the year.

To this day Jordan remembers his years at the University of North Carolina fondly. He had a special rapport with Tar Heels coach Dean Smith, and many of the friends he made there are still his closest companions today. He spent two more seasons on the UNC team and was named Ail-American in 1983 and 1984 and Sporting News college player of the year in 1983. After a disappointing 1983-84 campaign in which he led the Tar Heels to an Atlantic Coast Conference championship but bowed in the NCAA tournament, Jordan was named co-captain of the 1984 United States Olympic basketball team. In Los Angeles in the summer of 1984, Jordan was one of the leaders on an Olympic team that gracefully captured the gold medal.

Against his parents’ wishes, Jordan decided to go professional in 1984. He was drafted third in the first round of the 1984 NBA draft by the struggling Chicago Bulls. The Bulls were limping through a decade of lackluster performance and were searching for an athlete who could galvanize the team as a player and a leader. Jordan fit the bill perfectly. In his first professional season he led the NBA in points and was chosen rookie of the year. Even though the Bulls still continued to struggle, attendance at home games leaped 87 percent as word of the rookie phenomenon spread. Nor was Jordan merely a local hero. In every NBA city, attendance rose dramatically when the Chicago Bulls came to town.

A foot injury sidelined Jordan for most of the 1985-86 campaign. At the very end of the season he convinced the Bulls’ coach and owner to allow him to play. With his help the team surged to win a trip to the playoffs, in which the Bulls met the Boston Celtics with their popular star, Larry Bird. The Celtics had little trouble defeating the Bulls in the playoff series, but Jordan scored 49 points in Game One and 63 points in Game Two. An astounded Larry Bird quipped that the new star in Chicago was “God disguised as Michael Jordan.”

Jordan combined several highly regarded American commodities: good looks, phenomenal athletic ability, and—perhaps most importantly—a clean, scandal-free image. Advertisers were quick to court the young star for commercial endorsements of products. One of the first companies to seek Jordan’s help was Nike, makers of athletic clothing and footwear. For Jordan the company designed a whole new line of shoes, “Air Jordans,” taking their name from the player’s uncanny ability to hang four feet above the ground as he took shots during games. The Air Jordan line put an end to Nike’s sagging sneaker sales, earning an estimated $130 million in the first year of sales. Jordan pocketed a share of the profits for this venture. Other endorsement contracts were signed with McDonald’s, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, and Wheaties cereal, as well as numerous smaller businesses in the Chicago area.

Life in a Fishbowl

Many athletes have found that their on-court skills have been eroded when the demands of commercial endorsements and the crush of fame descend upon them. Jordan only seemed to get stronger. As the Bulls were rebuilt around him with a group of hungry young players, he continued to lead the NBA in scoring and often landed on the all-defensive first team as well. Breskin wrote: “The truly revolutionary aspect of Jordan’s brilliance is that although he possesses the most extravagant, high-cholesterol game in the history of the sport, it’s as controlled as it is wild and as thoughtful as it is free. There has never been such a spectacular player who was also so disciplined, so fundamentally sound. There has never been such a gifted offensive player who worked so hard, and so well, on the defensive end of the court.”

Few questioned Jordan’s ability, but as the 1980s progressed, naysayers pointed out that basketball’s newest superstar was unable to take his team to the NBA finals. One shadow that remained over the athlete’s career was the notion that great players who never win a title are somehow less great than those who do—hat truly brilliant players will wring the best possible performance out of mediocre teammates. Jordan was saddled with this burden of proving himself as the Bulls were eliminated at various steps in the playoffs throughout the remainder of the 1980s. A particularly frustrating opposing team in this regard was the Detroit Pistons, who devised a whole scheme to undermine Jordan’s productiveness during games.

Gradually the personnel around Jordan improved, however, and the Bulls began to assert themselves as a team. In 1991 the long-awaited NBA championship was finally achieved in a four-games-to-one victory over the Los Angeles Lakers. McCallum noted in Sports Illustrated: “To many NBA observers, the Bulls had to win it all before Jordan could conclusively prove that he was more than a high-flying sideshow or a long, loud ring of the cash register. They did. And so he did.” Any questions about Jordan’s greatness were dispelled in the 1991-92 and 1992-93 seasons as the Bulls became the first team in thirty years to win three consecutive NBA Championships. In 1992 the Bulls defeated the Portland Trail Blazers, in 1993 the Phoenix Suns. Jordan played almost nonstop in each and every championship series. Not only did he dominate the NBA, he also managed to lead the first-ever United States Olympic men’s basketball team manned by professionals. The “Dream Team” easily grabbed the gold medal in the 1992 Olympic Games-just weeks after Jordan’s Bulls had won a second NBA championship. Jordan repeated this feat at the 1996 Olympic games.

After the Bulls beat the Suns in six games for the 1993 NBA championship, McCallum asked in Sports Illustrated: “Is Michael Jeffrey Jordan simply the best basketball player in the history of the planet?… You know the answer to that question: yes. A resounding yes.” Jordan made history as the only athlete ever named NBA Finals Most Valuable Player three consecutive times. He is the only player besides Wilt Chamberlain ever to score 3,000 points in a season and the only player in history to score 50 or more points in five playoff games.

Everything has its price, though. For Jordan, the adoration of basketball fans worldwide and an unprecedented level of fame for an athlete brought a multitude of problems. Negative publicity began in the 1980s when teenagers began to use violent means to obtain Air Jordan sneakers costing in excess of $100 a pair. Jordan also had to defend himself against accusations of compulsive gambling on golf and card games. Twice the NBA investigated Jordan’s gambling activities. In 1991 he admitted betting more than $50,000 on golf games played with James “Slim” Bouler, who has since been convicted of selling cocaine. During the 1993 NBA Finals, a San Diego businessman named Richard Esquinas alleged in a self-published book that Jordan owed him $1.25 million in the wake of a ten-day golf gambling binge. Jordan claimed that he never bet anything near a million dollars on a golf game and that he merely gambles as recreation. Both times the NBA supported Jordan, but some critics claim that the investigations were “soft” because Jordan was such a powerful box office draw in the league.

The implications of any lasting scandal were obvious: Jordan could have lost his lucrative endorsement contracts while still being hounded mercilessly by the press and his fans. Since 1985 Jordan endured great restrictions on his movements—he was and is recognized, and mobbed, everywhere he goes in public. Following the gambling uproar, he faced the task of defending his reputation against those who would characterize him as out of control. McCallum is one reporter who has noticed the change wrought by this lifestyle that is akin to living in a fishbowl: “Gone is much of the spontaneous joy that Jordan brought to the game in 1984, when he entered the league with a head of hair, a pair of North Carolina shorts beneath his Bulls uniform and a boyish appetite for fame and glory…. somewhere amid all the adulation and pressure, a spark went out of Jordan—one that, it seems, will never return.”

Personal Tragedy and Its Aftermath

The Jordan family faced tragedy in the summer of 1993 when Michael’s father, James, was brutally murdered in North Carolina. Jordan fought tears and tried to dodge the press during his father’s funeral and the subsequent police investigation that uncovered two teenage suspects and an apparent motive of car theft. His father’s untimely death was yet another severe blow to Jordan, who had for some time contemplated retiring from the NBA in 1996. Just months before the murder, Jordan told People that he wanted to put an end to the strange, isolated existence he leads in an effort to avoid the media glare and the demands of flocks of fans. “I feel I’m at the stage of my career when it’s tough to move up,” he said. “I can only maintain and be consistent. I’ve set such high standards. You lose a bit of the joy as you move on.”

A bit of the joy may be gone for Jordan, but no amount of personal pain can erase the greatness of his career. As Richard Stengel observed in Time magazine in 1991, “All the commercial hype and publicity fade away when he does play, for Michael Jordan is the artwork and the artist, the poem and the poet. He reinvents the sport every time he rises—and rises—into the air.” Stengel concluded in the same article: “Michael Jordan is now his own greatest competition. When you make the miraculous routine, the merely superb becomes ordinary.”

Announced Retirement in October of 1993

Jordan had often referred to basketball as his “refuge,” but the combined toll of his father’s brutal murder, the media scrutiny surrounding his own gambling debts, the continuing pressures of his megastardom, and his professed feelings of having nothing left to prove on the basketball court are believed to have played a part in his decision to retire from the game at the age of 30. At a press conference held October 6, 1993, Jordan officially confirmed the rumors of his retirement from professional basketball, stating: “I’ve always stressed that when I lose the sense of motivation and the sense to prove something as a basketball player, it’s time to leave.” An Associated Press wire report released the evening before the news conference quoted him as saying: “It’s time for me to move on to something else. I know a lot of people are going to be shocked by this decision and probably won’t understand. But … I’m at peace with myself.”

In a photobiography titled Rare Air: Michael on Michael-- which was completed during the summer of 1993, but published after the player announced his retirement-Jordan foreshadowed his decision to withdraw from the spotlight while still at the height of his career: “When I leave the game,” he wrote, “I’ll leave on top. That’s the only way I’ll walk away. I don’t want to leave after my feet have slowed, my hands aren’t as quick, or my eyesight isn’t as sharp. I don’t want people to remember me that way. I want people to remember me playing exactly the kind of game I’m capable of playing right now. Nothing less.”

The drama of Jordan’s departure from the NBA was further heightened by his decision to enter the world of semi-professional baseball as an outfielder. In 1994, he signed on with the Birmingham Barons, a farm team for the Chicago White Sox, in search of a new challenge to feed his competitive nature. In spite of his unimpressive performance as a baseball player—ending the season with a .202 batting average—Jordan attracted hordes of fans to the Barons’ games, and the media heavily scrutinized the athlete in his new sport.

A 1995 labor dispute between baseball players and owners delayed the start of the season and Jordan, disappointed with his attempt to make it in baseball, used the opportunity to return to the sport he loved. He added to the hype of his comeback by making a movie that summer, Space Jam, which featured Jordan and an assortment of animated characters. The film, released during the Christmas season in 1996, contributed to his ever-growing appeal as a cultural icon, as did his own signature fragrance, MJ, released at the same time.

The Bulls had only 17 games remaining in the 1994-95 basketball season when Jordan returned, and sports commentators noticed that his time off made a telling difference in his game. Jordan had been away from the court for 21 months and acknowledged that he was rusty, scoring only 19 points in his comeback game against the Indiana Pacers. Many wondered if Jordan’s advanced age—then 32—was not also partly responsible for his diminished game. The Bulls ended the season by losing to the Orlando Magic in the conference semifinals.

Jordan used the off-season to retrain his body in the skills unique to basketball and to work on a style of play that would capitalize on his maturity. He perfected a virtually unstoppable jumpshot and proved in the 1995-96 season that his age was an asset, not a hindrance, to his game. Jeff Coplón, a writer for the New York Times Biographical Service, wrote, “He has traded risk for feel, nerve for guile, spectacle for efficiency…and because he is Jordan, even his efficiency can seem spectacular.” Under Jordan’s leadership, the Bulls had a record-breaking season, breaking the league record for the number of games won in the regular season (72-10), and beating the Seattle Supersonics for their fourth NBA championship. The year was a victorious one for Jordan on an individual level as he won the most-valuable-player awards for the regular season, the All-Star game, and the NBA finals-the first player to take all three in a single season since 1970.

The success of the 1995-96 season was repeated in the following two seasons as the Bulls maintained their dynastic hold on the NBA. As Jordan led the team to victory over the Utah Jazz in the 1997 NBA finals, and again in 1998, no one doubted that he was the key to the Bulls’ success. He was voted the series’ most valuable player in 1997, and held up his struggling team in the 1998 finals, even though he himself was battling stomach flu. His series-winning shot in the final seconds of the 1998 championship game acted as the fullest expression of Jordan’s drive to win, his extraordinary athletic ability, and his uncanny understanding of the game, as he overcame personal fatigue to land the winning basket in Game Six against the Utah Jazz.

That shot was to be Jordan’s last as a professinal basketball player, however. Jordan, who had only signed one-year contracts since his return, had kept the rumor mill busy with hints regarding his upcoming retirement. After the 1997-98 season, Jordan stated to the press on many occasions that he would retire if Bulls coach Phil Jackson left the team, and Jackson’s departure seemed imminent. An NBA lock-out over a labor dispute between players and coaches in 1998 further jeopardized Jordan’s return for another year. When the players and coaches reached an agreement to hold a shortened NBA season in January of 1999, Jordan officially announced his retirement.

Jordan’s departure from the game he had come to define in no way diminished his glory as the greatest basketball player ever. A monument to this phenomenal athlete stands in front of Chicago’s United Center-a 2,000-pound bronze statue which features Jordan in full flight, ready to slam dunk the ball, to the chagrin of cowering defenders. The front panel capsulizes the man: “The best there ever was. The best there ever will be.”

Sources

Books

Current Biography Yearbook 1997, H.W.Wilson Co., 1998.

Greene, Bob, Hang Time, Doubleday, 1992.

Jordan, Michael, Rare Air: Michael on Michael, photographed by Walter looss, Jr., edited by Mark Vancil, Collins Publishers San Francisco, 1993.

Periodicals

Associated Press wire report, October 5, 1993.

Ebony, December 1993, pp. 128-38.

Esquire, November 1990, pp. 138-216.

Forbes, May 25, 1992, p. 168.

Gentleman’s Quarterly, March 1989, pp. 319-97.

Newsweek, May 29, 1989, pp. 58-60; December 4, 1989, pp. 80-81; June 14, 1993, pp. 72-74; August 23, 1993, p. 60; August 30, 1993, p. 59; October 18, 1993, pp. 65-70; October-November 1993 Collector’s Issue (devoted to Jordan).

New Yorker, December 21, 1998, pp. 48-55.

New York Times Biographical Service, March 1995, pp. 438-439; April 1996, pp. 598-603.

People, May 17, 1993, pp. 82-87.

Publishers Weekly, July 26, 1993, p. 13.

Reader’s Digest, February 1993, pp. 79-83.

Shutterbug, December 1993, pp. 52-55.

Sports Illustrated, December 23, 1991, pp. 66-81; June 7, 1993, pp. 19-21; June 28, 1993, pp. 17-21; August 23, 1993, p. 11; October 18, 1993, pp. 28-34.

Time, June 24, 1991, p. 47; October 18, 1993, pp. 114-16.

Upscale, January 1994, pp. 28-32.

Other

Michael Jordan was profiled on Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, CBS-TV, July 15, 1993; an interview with Jordan conducted by Oprah Winfrey for Oprah, was first broadcast on ABC-TV on October 29, 1993.

—Mark Kram and Rebecca Parks

Jordan, Michael

(1963-)

Overview

Twice retired and three–times returned to the world of the National Basketball Association (NBA), Michael Jordan is one of the greatest basketball players of all time, as well as part–owner and the President of Basketball Operations for the Washington Wizards. His status as a basketball legend is equaled only by his global celebrity status. He has won an NCAA basketball championship, two Olympic gold medals, and six NBA championship titles. Jordan is considered the person who has almost single–handedly altered professional sports in the late twentieth century. "What was once a clubby parochial business with relatively narrow appeal is today a thriving, global, high–tech industry that attracts fans of all ages, ethnic groups, and cultures," reports Fortune magazine. "Stadiums are multimedia marketing platforms. Games are valuable programming, fought over by broadcasters around the world as networks and cable channels proliferate. And Jordan is at the center of it all." Desire, drive, and determination has made Michael Jordan one of the most successful, most popular, and wealthiest celebrities of his generation. And he just keeps bouncing back for more. . .

Personal Life

Jordan was born on February 17, 1963, in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in Wilmington, North Carolina. Growing up, he excelled at sports. Jordan has many fond memories of youth baseball, especially when he hit the game–winning home run in a Babe Ruth tournament. Reportedly, Jordan's father, James, always dreamed that his son would become a professional baseball player.

In what has become a classic contemporary sports legend, Jordan was cut from the varsity basketball team during his sophomore year in high school. Jordan himself cites that incident as one of the most important in his life. Not making the team encouraged Jordan to work for his goals. He made the team his junior and senior years, and after high school accepted a scholarship to the University of North Carolina.

After playing for three seasons at North Carolina, Jordan made himself available for the NBA draft in 1984. The Chicago Bulls chose him as their number one draft pick that year—third overall. The young draft pick turned out to be a good choice for the Bulls. Jordan was named the NBA's Rookie of the Year in 1985, averaging 28.2 points per game for the 1984–1985 season. His abilities in basketball were further proven the next season. After sitting out 64 games with a broken foot, Jordan returned to score a playoff–record 63 points in his first game back.

In 1989 Jordan married Juanita Vanoy, and they have three children: Jeffrey Michael, Marcus James, and Jasmine Mickael. Jordan's family, particularly his father, have always played an important part in his personal and professional life. In July of 1993 his father was murdered in North Carolina—less than two months after the Bulls won their third straight NBA championship. Three months later, Jordan announced his retirement from the NBA, citing the desire to spend more time with his family and friends and the desire for some sort of life outside of the spotlight.

Although always in the public spotlight for his professional talents, some aspects of Jordan's private life were initially kept from the public. In 1988 he had a son with Juanita Vanoy, but he did not marry her until the boy was almost a year old. It was also rumored that Jordan was a heavy gambler. And for years he endured criticism about his endorsement deal with athletic–gear maker Nike because of allegations of its mistreatment of employees, especially women and children, in its Asian plants. Nevertheless Jordan is an idolized figure and has been a role model for more than one generation.

Winning awards and honors such as MVP of the All–Star Game, numerous slam–dunk contests, and being named league MVP was only the beginning for Jordan in 1988. During that year the player who was originally viewed merely as an offensive weapon ended up being named Defensive Player of the Year as well as the MVP of the league. That season he was the first player to ever lead the league in both scoring and steals. Through 1998, Jordan was named to the All–NBA first team 10 times, and named to the All–NBA Defensive First Team eight times. In 1999, following his second retirement, Jordan was named Athlete of the Century by ESPN, trumping the long–time held previous status of baseball's Babe Ruth.

Personally, Jordan earned more money from endorsements than he did from playing basketball. Companies like Nike, Wilson, Gatorade, Coke, McDonald's, Hanes, and General Mills all wanted him to be associated with their products. Between Air Jordans and other shoes and apparel, it is estimated that Jordan products have brought in $2.6 billion for Nike. Michael Jordan's endorsement of Hanes underwear was expected to exceed $10 million annually. A cologne from Bijan as well as a popular Chicago eatery have also carried his name. It has been estimated that such endorsements net Jordan another $42 million annually.

Michael Jordan's money is also put to humanitarian uses. He personally established several charities, including the Jordan Institute for Families and Night Ministry. After his father was murdered, Jordan and the Chicago Bulls established the James Jordan Boys and Girls Club and Family Life Center, which aids Chicago–area youth. The Michael Jordan Flight School was established to serve as a summer basketball camp for boys and girls between the ages of eight and 18. When Jordan returned to play in 2001, he donated his initial $1 million salary to relief funds for victims of the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

Career Details

Like most professionals in the NBA, Michael Jordan prepared himself for his career by playing college basketball. In his first season at North Carolina he became only the second Tarheel player to start every game as a freshman and was named the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Rookie of the Year in 1982. Jordan led the ACC in scoring during his sophomore and junior years, and was also named the College Player of the Year by Sporting News after both seasons. Although he had three outstanding college seasons, the success Jordan was to have in the NBA was not entirely apparent, for he was only the third player chosen in the 1984 draft, trailing Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Bowie.

Jordan, however, experienced immediate success in the NBA. He was named to the All–Star Team in his first season and also became Rookie of the Year. A broken foot, the only serious injury of his career, sidelined Jordan during most of his second season. He returned in time for the playoffs, and set a NBA playoff scoring record with 63 points in his second playoff game. He averaged 37.1 points per game during his third season, winning the first of seven consecutive scoring titles. Jordan's run was only interrupted by his first retirement in 1993.

In 1989 Jordan led the Bulls to the conference finals. Although it would be two more seasons before the Bulls would win the championship, the team had arrived. The Bulls won the NBA championship three successive years, from 1991 to 1993, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers, the Portland Trailblazers, and the Phoenix Suns. Jordan was voted MVP of the finals all three times.

After winning the 1992 finals, Jordan led a group of NBA players who played for the U.S. Olympic basketball team. This team—which paired Jordan with other superstars like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, and Karl Malone—became known as the "Dream Team." The team easily won the gold medal, winning by an average margin of victory of 43.7 points.

One month after watching his son lead Chicago to its third straight NBA title in 1993, James Jordan, Michael's father, was murdered. Stating that he had nothing left to accomplish, Jordan announced his retirement from the NBA in October of 1993. He left the sport as the all–time leading scorer in the history of the Chicago Bulls.

The next year he moved onto a different playing field, joining the Chicago White Sox minor league baseball team. He spent 17 months in the minors, with the media again scrutinizing his every move. All in all, his career as a baseball player was short–lived and unspectacular, but it did provide a much–needed respite from basketball as well as an opportunity for Jordan to regain his passion for the game. His return to the NBA was chronicled in two bestsellers: Bob Greene's Rebound: The Odyssey of Michael Jordan, and Sam Smith's Second Coming: The Strange Odyssey of Michael Jordan: from Courtside to Home Plate and Back Again.

When Jordan first returned to the Bulls in the 1994–1995 season, both he and his team played inconsistently at first. The Bulls reached the playoffs and advanced to the conference semi–finals to face the new talk of the league, Shaquille O'Neal, star of the Orlando Magic. Jordan prevented the Bulls from winning the first game by making two errors in the final 18 seconds. At this point the great Michael Jordan was viewed as only human. The Orlando Magic defeated the Bulls four games to two.

Chronology: Michael Jordan

1963: Born.

1983: Named All–American first team while playing for the University of North Carolina.

1984: Picked third overall in the NBA draft as the Chicago Bull's No. 1 draft pick and led the U.S. Olympic Team to gold medal.

1985: Named NBA Rookie of the Year, averaging 28.2 points per game.

1986: Returned from an injury to score an NBA playoff–record 63 points in a single playoff game.

1987: Won first of seven straight NBA scoring titles.

1991: Led the Chicago Bulls to the first of six NBA Championship Titles.

1993: Retired from the NBA to pursue career in professional baseball.

1995: Returned to NBA.

1998: Led Bulls to sixth league championship in eight years.

1999: Announced retirement from NBA.

2000: Became part–owner and president of basketball operations for the Washington Wizards.

2001: Returned from second retirement to play for the Wizards.

The 1995–1996 season was built on the type of playing on which records are made: the Bulls finished the regular season 71–10, an NBA record, and Jordan earned an eighth scoring title. The Bulls won their fourth NBA title that season, defeating the Seattle Supersonics. The following season Jordan led the Bulls to another title, this time defeating the Utah Jazz. In the 1997–1998 season, it looked like the Bulls might not even make the finals, for Indiana pushed the Bulls to seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals. But Jordan and the Bulls endured and met the Jazz again, emerging as six–time league champions.

During a contentious lockout that blemished the 1998–1999—the first–ever work stoppage in the 52–year history of the NBA—Jordan found himself increasingly at odds with Bulls management. In January of 1999, he again announced his retirement from the game, this time assuring fans that he meant it. He left the league as one of its three all–time scorers, with 29,277 points to his name. "Mentally, I'm exhausted," Jordan said at a press conference announcing the departure, according to a New York Times report by Mike Wise. "Right now, I just don't have the mental challenges that I've had in the past to proceed as a basketball player. This is perfect time for me to walk away from the game. And I'm at peace with that." Even President Bill Clinton commented publicly on Jordan's decision to leave the game.

But he had not planned to leave it entirely: a year later, Jordan became part owner and president of operations for the Washington Wizards, one of the NBA's more underachieving franchises. Formerly known as the Washington Bullets, they were last in their division at the time of the announcement, with a record of 12–28, and had only one championship title (dating back to 1978) to their name. The move was immediately heralded as the best thing that could ever happen to such a team, and it was welcomed with tremendous fanfare in the city. Jordan declared his intention to practice with the team, which boasted some young players of great promise, and it was rumored that both this unusual plan as well as the mere presence of Jordan in the front offices might attract some stellar free agents to the Wizards' roster.

For the 2000–2001 season, Jordan was seen several times practicing hard with his team. By 2001, rumors began to surface that he might again return to the court. In June 2001, as president of the Wizards, Jordan made history by selecting the first ever high school player (Kwame Brown) with the top pick in the NBA draft. Within ninety days, it was official: Jordan was returning from his second retirement to play for the Wizards. Much press coverage and speculation surrounded his return, but by December 2001, he had led the team to a 10–12 season record. Considering that the ten–year cumulative record of the team was 344–648, 2001 represented substantial progress.

Social and Economic Impact

When Jordan was drafted by the Chicago Bulls, they were a lackluster team, seldom drawing more than 6,000 fans to a home game. Jordan quickly turned that around. His style of play, incredible leaping ability, and his hang time thrilled fans in basketball arenas across the country. Both he and the hugely popular "Air Jordan" sneakers from Nike have ushered in a new era of popularity for the once–moribund pastime; even Hollywood began to see the potential in producing movies centered around the sport.

Michael Jordan's success initially meant more money for the Chicago Bulls, who began selling out their games at home and on the road. Yet during the first years of his career he was under a long–term contract that did not net him anywhere near as much income as other stars of the game. Finally Jordan received the contract he deserved, a one–year, $30–million agreement for the 1997–1998 season; it was the highest single–season contract in the history of professional sports. Though that figure may seem high, the Bulls' five (and that year, six) league championships forever banished the city's bruised civic pride at its poorly performing teams: Chicago's Bears football franchise last won a Superbowl in 1985, Blackhawks hockey players hadn't skated to a Stanley Cup victory since 1961, and the last time one of its two baseball teams had won a pennant race, America was fighting in World War I.

Jordan's success not only meant more money for the Bulls, it meant more money for the NBA, especially in marketing Jordan's jersey, with his old number 23 and the new number 45 after he returned from baseball. Jordan reportedly did more for the financial success of the NBA than Larry Bird and Magic Johnson did in the late 1970s. Industry analysts theorize that Jordan's presence alone in the game was responsible for around $500 million in additional revenues for the NBA.

Jordan has been referred to as "Jesus in Nikes." Marketing surveys show that he possesses one of the most recognizable faces on the planet, known even by children living in some of the most impoverished rural corners of the planet. At Chicago's United Center, home to the Bulls, visitors sometimes kneel at a statue of Jordan that graces the entrance. He has been the subject of not only sports biographies, but of serious tomes that examine his impact on professional sports. Among these are Michael Jordan and the World He Made, by David Halberstam, and Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism by Walter LaFeber. "To [some], Jordan personified not only the imaginative, individual skills that Americans dream of displaying in a society that adores graceful and successful individualism," wrote LaFeber, "but the all–out competitive spirit and discipline that Americans like to think drove their nation to the peak of world power."

Sources of Information

Bibliography

Clarkston, Michael. "Air Jordan: Older, Wiser but not Grounded Yet." Toronto Star, 16 December 2001.

Clines, Francis X. "For the Wizards' Fans, an Ambassador of Hope." New York Times, 20 January 2000.

Greene, Bob. Rebound: The Odyssey of Michael Jordan. New York: Viking Penguin, 1995.

Holstein, William. "Jordan Hits the Road." U.S. News & World Report, 2 February 1998.

LaFeber, Walter. Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.

MacMullan, Jackie. "What's to Like, Mike?" Sports Illustrated, 24 January 2000.

"Michael Jordan Chronology." Los Angeles Times, 26 September 2001.

"Michael Jordan Goes Young as Wizards Pick High–Schooler Kwame Brown." Canadian Press,, 27 June 2001.

"Michael Jordan Sues Owners of Popular Chicago Restaurant Named for Him." Jet, 15 November 1999.

"Mike's Timely Rebound." Christian Science Monitor, 27 September 2001.

Rhoden, William C. "A Very Cold Send–Off for the Hottest Athlete." New York Times, 14 January 1999.

Samuels, Allison. "Mike on Mike." Newsweek, 22 September 1997.

Jordan, Michael

(1963-)

Overview

Michael Jordan is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He has won an NCAA basketball championship, two Olympic gold medals, six NBA (National Basketball Association) championship titles, and is certainly the most well-known athlete of the late 1980s and 1990s. It has been claimed that he has single-handedly, fundamentally changed the sports business in the 1990s. "What was once a clubby parochial business with relatively narrow appeal is today a thriving, global, high-tech industry that attracts fans of all ages, ethnic groups, and cultures," reports Fortune magazine. "Stadiums are multimedia marketing platforms. Games are valuable programming, fought over by broadcasters around the world as networks and cable channels proliferate. And Jordan is at the center of it all." Desire, drive, and determination has made Michael Jordan one of the most successful, most popular, and wealthiest celebrities of his generation.

Personal Life

Jordan was born on February 17, 1963, in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in Wilmington, North Carolina. Growing up, he always excelled at sports. Jordan has many fond memories of youth baseball, especially when he hit the game-winning home run in a Babe Ruth tournament. Reportedly, Jordan's father, James, always dreamed that his son would become a professional baseball player.

In what has become a part of classic contemporary sports legends, it is common knowledge that in high school, the varsity basketball team cut Jordan during his sophomore year. Jordan himself cites that incident as one of the most important in his life. Not making the team tested Jordan's willingness to work for his goals. He made the team his junior and senior years, and after high school accepted a scholarship to the University of North Carolina.

He played for three seasons at North Carolina and then made himself available for the NBA draft in 1984. He was chosen third by the Chicago Bulls. In 1989 Jordan married Juanita Vanoy, and they have three children: Jeffrey Michael, Marcus James, and Jasmine Mickael. Jordan's family, particularly his father, always played an important part in his personal and professional life. In July of 1993 his father was murdered in North Carolina. Three months later, Jordan announced his retirement from the NBA, citing the desire to spend more time with his family and friends and the desire for some sort of life outside of the spotlight.

Some aspects of Jordan's private life were initially kept from the public, though they later became common knowledge. In 1988 he had a son with Juanita Vanoy, but he did not marry her until the boy was almost a year old. Jordan also became known as a heavy gambler. And for years Jordan was criticized for his involvement with Nike because of allegations of its mistreatment of employees, especially women and children, in its Asian plants. Nevertheless Jordan is an idolized figure and a role model for a generation.

Career Details

Like most professionals in the NBA, Michael Jordan prepared himself for his career by playing college basketball. In his first season at North Carolina he became only the second Tarheel player to start every game as a freshman and was named the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Rookie of the Year in 1982. Jordan led the ACC in scoring during his sophomore and junior years, and was also named the College Player of the Year by Sporting News after both seasons. Although he had three outstanding college seasons, the success Jordan was to have in the NBA was not entirely apparent, for he was only the third player chosen in the 1984 draft—Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Bowie were chosen before him.

Jordan, however, experienced immediate success in the NBA. He was named to the All-Star Team in his first season and also became Rookie of the Year. A broken foot, the only serious injury of his career, sidelined Jordan during most of his second season. He returned in time for the playoffs, and set an NBA playoff scoring record with 63 points in his second playoff game. He averaged 37.1 points per game during his third season, winning the first of seven consecutive scoring titles. Jordan's run was only interrupted by his retirement.

Winning awards and honors—earning MVP of the All-Star Game, winning the slam dunk contest, being named league MVP—began to become commonplace for Jordan starting in 1988. During that year the player who was originally only viewed as an offensive weapon was named Defensive Player of the Year as well as the MVP of the league. That season he was the first player to ever lead the league in both scoring and steals. Through 1998, Jordan was named to the All NBA first team ten times, and named to the All NBA Defensive First Team eight times.

In 1989 Jordan led the Bulls to the Conference Finals. Although it would be two more seasons before the Bulls would win the championship, the team had arrived. The Bulls won the NBA championship three successive years, from 1991-93, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers, the Portland Trailblazers, and the Phoenix Suns. Jordan was voted MVP of the finals all three times.

After winning the 1992 finals, Jordan led a group of NBA players who played for the U.S. Olympic basketball team. This team which paired Jordan with other superstars like Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, and Karl Malone—became known as the "Dream Team." The team easily won the gold medal, winning by an average margin of victory of 43.7 points.

One month after watching his son lead Chicago to its third straight NBA title in 1993, James Jordan, Michael's father, was murdered. Michael Jordan was grief stricken. This tragedy, combined with increasing media scrutiny over his gambling, left him feeling depleted and disenchanted with his life as a basketball superstar. Stating that he had nothing left to accomplish, he announced his retirement from the NBA in October of 1993. Jordan retired as the all-time leading scorer in the history of the Chicago Bulls.

The next year he changed sports, joining the Chicago White Sox minor league baseball team. He spent 17 months in the minors and followed and scrutinized his every move. All in all, his career as a baseball player was short-lived and unspectacular. His 17 months in the minors did provide a much-needed break from basketball and gave Jordan an opportunity to regain his passion for the game. His return to the NBA was chronicled in two bestsellers: Bob Greene's Rebound: The Odyssey of Michael Jordan, and Sam Smith's Second Coming: The Strange Odyssey of Michael Jordan—from Courtside to Home Plate and Back Again.

When Jordan first returned to the Bulls in the 1994-1995 season, both he and his team played inconsistently at first. The Bulls reached the playoffs and advanced to the conference semi-finals to face the new talk of the league, Shaquille O'Neal, star of the Orlando Magic. Jordan prevented the Bulls from winning the first game by making two errors in the final 18 seconds. At this point the great Michael Jordan was viewed as only human. The Orlando Magic defeated the Bulls four games to two.

The 1995-1996 season was built on the type of playing on which records are made—the Bulls finished the regular season 71-10, an NBA record, and Jordan earned an eighth scoring title. The Bulls won their fourth NBA title that season, defeating the Seattle Supersonics. The following season Jordan led the Bulls to another title, this time defeating the Utah Jazz. In the 1997-98 season, it looked like the Bulls might not even make the finals, for Indiana pushed the Bulls to seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals. But Jordan and the Bulls endured and met the Jazz again, emerging as champions.

Social and Economic Impact

When Jordan was drafted by the Chicago Bulls, they were a lackluster team, seldom drawing more than 6,000 fans to a home game. Jordan quickly turned that around. His style of play, incredible leaping ability, and his hang time thrilled fans in basketball arenas across the country.

Michael Jordan's success initially meant more money for the Chicago Bulls, who began selling out their games at home and on the road. Hard core and casual fans were interested in an opportunity to marvel at history in the making. Early on, Jordan was signed to a long-term contract, though while still under contract, new, unproven players were making millions more. Finally Jordan received the contract he deserved, a one-year $30 million contract for the 1997-98 season, the highest single-season contract in the history of professional sports.

Chronology: Michael Jordan

1963: Born.

1978: Cut from high school varsity basketball team.

1982: While playing for North Carolina, hit "The Shot," the game winning jumper that defeated Georgetown in the NCAA finals.

1984: Picked third in the NBA draft and led U.S. Olympic Team to gold medal.

1985: Named NBA Rookie of the Year.

1986: Returned from an injury to score an NBA record 63 points in a single playoff game.

1987: Won first of seven straight NBA scoring titles.

1991: Led the Chicago Bulls to the first of six NBA Championship Titles.

1993: Retired from the NBA to pursue career in professional baseball.

1995: Returned to NBA.

Jordan's success not only meant more money for the Bulls, it meant more money for the NBA, especially in marketing Jordan's jersey, with his old number 23 and the new number 45 after he returned from baseball. Jordan reportedly did more for the financial success of the NBA than Larry Bird and Magic Johnson did in the late 1970s.

Personally, Jordan earned more money from endorsements than he did from playing basketball. Companies like Nike, Wilson, Gatorade, Coke, McDonald's, Hanes, and General Mills all wanted him to be associated with their products. Between Air Jordans and other shoes and apparel, it is estimated that Jordan products have brought in $2.6 billion for Nike. Michael Jordan's endorsement of Hanes underwear was expected to exceed $10 million annually. Developed by Bijan, Michael Jordan cologne has generated worldwide sales of $155 million as of mid-1998. A popular catch phrase that began in the mid-1980s was "I wanna be like Mike." No mention of a last name was needed. In addition to his endorsements, Jordan has opened three restaurants named after himself; the huge basketball on the roof clearly identifies the place. Jordan also starred with Bugs Bunny in the half-animated feature film Space Jam which brought in an estimated $440 million in box office tickets and video sales.

Michael Jordan's money is also put to humanitarian uses. He personally established several charities—the Jordan Institute for Families and Night Ministry. After his father was murdered, Jordan and the Chicago Bulls established the James Jordan Boys and Girls Club and Family Life Center, which aids Chicago-area youth. The Michael Jordan Flight School was established to serve as a summer basketball camp for boys and girls between the ages of eight and 18.

In 1997 Michael Jordan, in conjunction with Nike, introduced his own brand of athletic shoes and apparel. The Air Jordan series had been Nike's most profitable shoes since they were introduced in the mid-1980s. Jordan told Newsweek that this new business would "keep me in touch with the game" after he retires. Reportedly Jordan has repeatedly stated that he is not interested in either coaching, managing, or owning his own NBA team. He has not expressed interest in broadcasting either.

Sources of Information

Contact at: Michael Jordan
1901 West Madison Street
Chicago, IL 60612

Bibliography

Byers, Paula K. and Suzanne M. Bourgoin, eds. Encyclopedia of World Biographies. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.

Greene, Bob. Rebound: The Odyssey of Michael Jordan. New York: Viking Penguin, 1995.

Holstein, William. "Jordan Hits the Rroad." U.S. News & World Report, 2 February 1998.

Jordan, Michael. Rare Air: Michael on Michael. San Francisco: Collins Publishers, 1993.

Kornbluth, Jesse. "Michael Jordan: Presiding on Olympus, He's Bullish on Privacy." People, 17 May 1993.

Samuels, Allison. "Mike on Mike." Newsweek, 22 September 1997.

Smith, Sam. Second Coming: The Strange Odyssey of Michael Jordan—from Courtside to Home Plate and Back Again. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.