Random Wild Stories And Rumors About Michael Jordan (21 items)

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  (#7) There Was Rampant Speculation About The Motives Behind His Father's Murder

  Michael Jordan's father, James, was last seen alive on July 22, 1993. Twenty-one days later, his family told the police that he was missing. One day after making the report, a John Doe who had been found in a swamp in McColl, SC more than a week earlier was identified as being the basketball star's missing father. Two teenagers, Daniel Green and Larry Demery, were eventually convicted, receiving sentences of life in prison. The generally accepted motive for the crime is a robbery gone bad - the elder Jordan had pulled his Lexus off the highway to take a nap and had been shot after waking up to find the two teens attempting to steal the car.

  But in his failed 2018 attempt to receive a new trial, Green disputed many of the claims made in the prosecution's version of events, a version that had been built mainly on Demery's claims, as Green never even took the stand during his trial. Twenty years prior to this attempt to be given a new trial Green refuted his co-defendant's claim that Green had been the one to shoot Jordan.

  "I did not kill Mr. Jordan, no sir," Green told WRAL-TV in 1998. "...that's cut and dry. It's not like I was even there..." Green identified Demery as the actual shooter but went on to say that he felt that both of them were "pawns in a game."

  Although Green didn't elaborate on what kind of game he and Demery may have been part of, his comment suggested that the motive was not as simple as robbery. Which was in line with the media speculation that was prevalent in the immediate aftermath of the incident. Some reporters rushed to suggest that the whole thing was somehow connected to Michael Jordan's well-known gambling habit. The FBI's refusal to rule out any motive for the elder Jordan's murder helped to boost this speculation, as did Jesse Jackson when he called  the murder "a highly calculated gangland-type killing."

  Mark Whicker, who was then a sports columnist with the Orange County (CA) Register, wrote: "For now, we just know that there is evidence of the son's gambling problem, and there is suspicion of a son's paying [off his gambling debts] problem. The father of that son has been murdered. Coincidence, anyone?" 

  The speculation continued even after Demery and Green were arrested. In an August 15, 1993 column in the San Francisco Chronicle, Scott Ostler wrote: "All of us who were cooking up murky theories in the death of Michael Jordan's father have to feel pretty crummy today for having turned the murder into a parlor game, I refuse to feel chagrined for having played 'Who Murdered James Jordan.'" Ostler gave three reasons for his lack of remorse: (1) the teenagers were only suspects; (2) Michael Jordan himself had been carrying on a campaign to cast shadows over his reputation with his links to gambling and crime; and (3) the basketball star was too famous for reporters to just focus on the basketball while ignoring the off-the-court stuff.
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  (#10) Jordan Keeps A Running "List" Of Everyone Who's Ever Wronged Him

  Jordan had a habit of using any perceived slight against him - real or imagined - as extra motivation. When the Bulls met the Utah Jazz for the first of two times in the NBA Finals in 1997, he had (at least) two things to use as extra motivation - Karl Malone being named the league MVP that season, and a chat with Bryon Russell (when Jordan was still playing baseball) in which Russell claimed he could guard him. "From that point on, he's been on my list," Jordan admitted in The Last Dance documentary.

  When Jordan unretired and returned to the Bulls in 1995, he briefly wore number 45 instead of 23. In Game 1 of the Bulls' playoff series against the Orlando Magic, Nick Anderson reportedly said "45 isn't 23" after sealing the win for Orlando by stealing the ball from Jordan. The next game, Jordan was back to wearing number 23 and led the Bulls to a victory to tie the series. By 1993, Jordan had little use for Bulls' GM Jerry Krause. He knew that Krause was a fan of Dan Majerle, especially his defense. Which was enough to make Jordan constantly attack Majerle's defense when the Bulls and Suns met in the NBA Finals that season. In 1996, the Bulls faced the Seattle SuperSonics in the NBA Finals. When George Karl deliberately refused to talk to Jordan when he saw him at a restaurant prior to Game 1, the basketball star took it as a personal snub.

  Even future and former teammates weren't immune from the wrath of Jordan. In the 1992 Olympics, both Jordan and Scottie Pippen deliberately targeted Croatia's Toni Kukoc, who was a huge star in Europe and who had been drafted by the Bulls in 1990 and was known to be a favorite of Jerry Krause's. B.J. Armstrong, meanwhile, had been a key member of the Bulls' first three title teams, but in 1998 was playing for the Charlotte Hornets. The two teams met in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, and in Game 2 Armstrong hit a big shot over Jordan that sealed the win for Charlotte and tied the series at 1-1. “I hit that shot, and I remember, I let Michael know. I let Phil Jackson know, I let Scottie know, I let everybody that I knew over there know,” Armstrong said in The Last Dance documentary. Big mistake - and he knew it.

  “If you’re going to high-five, talk trash, now I had a bone to pick with you. I’m supposed to kill this guy, you know, I’m supposed to dominate this guy," Jordan explained in The Last Dance. “And from that point I did.”
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  (#16) Jordan Reportedly Drank A Lot Of Beer After Games

  Roland Lazenby's book Blood on the Horns: The Long Strange Ride of Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls is currently out of print. In it the author wrote that the rumors about Jordan's drinking after games were true. But he also stated that this wasn't unusual behavior in the NBA.

  "In the first half hour after a game, Jordan and various teammates would pound down five or six beers and often fire up a cigar," the book reads. "It’s not unusual for pro basketball players to drink beer after games. They’ve been doing it for decades. It helped them replace the body fluids they’ve sweated away."

  Sam Smith, the longtime Bulls' reporter and author of The Jordan Rules agreed with Lazenby, telling First We Feast "It was fairly common back then for beer to be in locker rooms and players to have a can or two in the hour or so they’d linger after. Maybe take a few with them to drink later. No one much hurried to leave [the locker room]."

  Of course, since Toni Kukoc apparently drank wine before games and Ron Artest admitted in an interview with the Sporting News that he used to drink Hennessy during halftime of games, it's no wonder that drinking after games wasn't seen as unusual, let alone scandalous.
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  (#12) Jordan Hates Isiah Thomas, But Claims He Didn't Keep Thomas Off The Olympic 'Dream Team'

  It's no secret that there is a long-running feud between Jordan and Isiah Thomas. In The Last Dance documentary, Jordan openly admitted that he hates the Hall of Fame guard, even as he called him the second best point guard in NBA history. The documentary has reignited the feud and caused the question of whether Jordan was responsible for Thomas being left off the 1992 U.S. Olympic men's basketball team (the "Dream Team").

  It's not clear what started the feud. Some point to a theory that Thomas conspired to freeze the rookie Jordan out in the 1985 All-Star Game - an allegation that Thomas has denied. Others suggest that Thomas - a native of Chicago - was jealous that Jordan had come along and become a superstar in that city. Then there's the fact that Thomas and his Detroit Pistons' teammates were the roadblock standing in Jordan's path to the NBA Finals - Detroit defeated the Bulls in three straight playoff meetings between 1987-88 and 1989-90, going on to win the NBA championship in the latter two seasons.

  When Chicago finally broke through and swept Detroit in the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals, the Pistons left the floor before the final buzzer sounded, refusing to congratulate the victors. Jordan was among the Bulls' players who considered that a classless act, and he still holds that event against Thomas, “There’s no way,” Jordan said, “you can convince me he wasn’t an a–hole.”

  In The Last Dance, Jordan denied that had any influence in the decision to leave Thomas off the "Dream Team" roster. “You want to attribute it to me, go ahead and be my guest. But it wasn’t me.” And Jordan wasn't the only other NBA star who allegedly didn't particularly want the Pistons' guard on the team. But Jordan's denial contradicts a quote in Jack McCallum's book Dream Team in which the Bulls' superstar allegedly told Rod Thorn [who was responsible for assembling the roster], "Rod, I don't want to play if Isiah is on the tea.,"
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  (#20) Jordan And Scottie Pippen Had A Birthday Dance-Off

  Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen might have had a dance off to a Trey Songz and Fabolous song at Pippen's 47th birthday bash in 2012. According to the New York Post: 

  "Michael Jordan surprised his former teammate Scottie Pippen for Pippen’s 47th birthday party Monday night. Pippen’s wife, Larsa, planned the secret bash at Chicago hot spot Sunda. Sources told us the fun night ended with a dance-off between Jordan and Pippen to the Trey Songz and Fabolous song,  'Say Ahh.'"

  While there doesn't appear to be any video evidence of this, we do have video of Jordan and Pippen, along with a few other Bulls, dancing to Kool Moe Dee's "How You Like Me Now." The video was shown during halftime of a Bulls-Knicks game in April 1988 and popped up again years later during an Oprah Winfrey interview with Jordan.
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  (#15) Jordan Gave A Young Tiger Woods Advice On How To Approach Women

  Jordan and Tiger Woods have been friends since the latter was a teenager. Woods was still a decade away from the cheating scandal that destroyed his marriage when he went up to Jordan and baseball star Derek Jeter at a New York City nightclub one night in 1996 to ask them how he could approach women as smoothly as they did. Their advice? "Just go tell them you're Tiger Woods."

  There are stories that a family friend of Tiger's parents had warned them to keep him away from the basketball legend, but that he ignored the warning. Given Jordan's own cheating scandals, in retrospect it can be said that, at least when it comes to giving advice on women, Jordan might not have been the best person to give advice to Woods.

  When Jordan and his first wife Juanita Vanoy divorced in 2006, she was awarded a staggering $168 million in the settlement. He allegedly paid Karla Knafel $250,000 to keep their relationship a secret but in 2006 she hit him with a paternity suit, though she lost the suit when a DNA test showed that he wasn't the father of her child. In 2013, another alleged former lover, Pamela Smith sued Jordan, claiming she'd had an affair with the married basketball star in 1995 and that he was the father of her son Taj, who had been born the following year. Smith's suit ended up getting dismissed - the judge called it a big publicity stunt, pointing out that paternity of the boy had been determined years earlier (Jordan was not the father). The judge even ordered her to pay Jordan's legal fees.

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