Who Is Michael Jordan?

1. Wilmington, the cut, and North Carolina

Michael Jeffrey Jordan was born on 17 February 1963 in Brooklyn, New York, the fourth of five children of James and Deloris Jordan, and he grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina, where his father worked at a General Electric plant and his mother worked in a bank. He was a competitive child, and the competition with his older brother Larry, who was shorter but stronger, shaped him: the two played one-on-one games in the backyard that often ended in fights, and Jordan has said that losing to Larry taught him to hate losing. He played baseball and basketball as a boy, and he was good at both, but basketball became his game.

The most famous story of Jordan's youth is that he was cut from the varsity basketball team at Laney High School as a sophomore, at fifteen, and placed on the junior varsity team instead. The story has become a piece of American folklore, and Jordan has told it many times as the moment that made him: he went home, cried, and then worked harder than anyone else. The details are debated — he was 5 feet 11 inches tall at the time, and the coach chose a taller senior — but the meaning is not: Jordan turned rejection into motivation, and the chip on his shoulder became a permanent part of his personality. He made the varsity team the next year, averaged more than twenty points a game as a junior and a senior, and was recruited by the University of North Carolina.

At North Carolina, under the coach Dean Smith, Jordan learned the team game. Smith's system was disciplined and unselfish, and it taught Jordan to play within a structure, to defend, and to trust his teammates. As a freshman in 1982, Jordan hit the winning shot in the NCAA championship game against Georgetown, a seventeen-foot jump shot with fifteen seconds left that made him a national figure. He stayed for three years, was named college player of the year in 1984, and won a gold medal with the United States team at the Los Angeles Olympics the same summer. In 1984 he left college a year early and was drafted third overall by the Chicago Bulls, behind Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Bowie, a draft order that the Portland Trail Blazers, who chose Bowie, have regretted ever since.

2. The early Bulls: a star without a team

Jordan's first years in Chicago were a revelation and a frustration. He was named Rookie of the Year in 1985, and he averaged more than twenty-eight points a game, but the Bulls were a mediocre team, and they lost in the first round of the playoffs in each of his first three seasons. Jordan was the most exciting player in the league — his dunks, his hang time, his ability to score from anywhere — but the team around him was not good enough, and the Detroit Pistons, who beat the Bulls in the playoffs in three consecutive years from 1988 to 1990, built their defence around stopping him, a strategy known as the Jordan Rules, which involved fouling him hard whenever he drove to the basket.

The early years taught Jordan two things. The first was that individual brilliance was not enough: he needed teammates who could score and defend, and a system that did not depend on him alone. The second was that he needed to become stronger and more complete, and he worked on his defence, his jump shot and his conditioning. In 1988 he was named Most Valuable Player and Defensive Player of the Year in the same season, a combination that showed he was not only the league's best scorer but also one of its best defenders. The award was a statement: Jordan was not a showman, he was a complete player, and he was determined to win.

The turning point came with the arrival of the coach Phil Jackson in 1989 and the development of Scottie Pippen, a forward drafted in 1987 who became Jordan's running mate and one of the best players in the league. Jackson introduced the triangle offence, a system designed by his assistant Tex Winter that spread the scoring among the team and reduced Jordan's burden. The Bulls also added Horace Grant and, later, Dennis Rodman, and the team became a defensive force as well as an offensive one. In 1991 the Bulls finally beat the Pistons in the conference finals, sweeping them in four games, and then beat the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals to win their first championship. Jordan, who had cried in the locker room after the final game, was named Finals Most Valuable Player.

3. The first three-peat, 1991-1993

The Bulls won three consecutive championships from 1991 to 1993, the first three-peat since the Boston Celtics of the 1960s. The 1991 title was won against the Lakers and Magic Johnson, the passing of the torch from one generation to the next. The 1992 title was won against the Portland Trail Blazers, in a series remembered for Jordan's six three-pointers in the first half of the opening game, after which he shrugged at the camera, a gesture that became famous. The 1993 title was won against the Phoenix Suns and Charles Barkley, in a six-game series in which Jordan averaged more than forty points a game, one of the great Finals performances in history.

The three-peat was built on the partnership between Jordan and Pippen, on Jackson's coaching, and on a team that understood its roles. Jordan was the scorer and the closer, Pippen was the defender and the playmaker, and the supporting players — Grant, John Paxson, B.J. Armstrong, Bill Cartwright — did the work that made the stars possible. The Bulls were also a team that practised hard and held each other to a high standard, and Jordan's competitiveness, which could be brutal in practice, was part of the culture. Teammates have described practices that were more intense than games, and Jordan's willingness to challenge anyone, including his coach, was a source of both tension and success.

The first three-peat ended in tragedy. In July 1993 Jordan's father, James, was murdered in North Carolina, a crime that devastated Jordan and that he has described as the hardest experience of his life. In October 1993, at thirty, Jordan announced his retirement from basketball, saying that he had lost the desire to play. The announcement shocked the sports world, and it was followed by a decision that shocked it further: Jordan signed a contract to play professional baseball in the Chicago White Sox organisation, pursuing a childhood dream and, as he later said, a promise to his father, who had wanted him to try baseball.

4. Baseball, the return, and the second three-peat

Jordan played baseball in 1994 for the Birmingham Barons, a minor league team in the White Sox system, and he batted .202, a modest record that showed both his athleticism and the difficulty of the sport. He was criticised by some for using his fame to take a place that belonged to a career minor leaguer, and praised by others for his willingness to start at the bottom and to work hard at a game he had not played since high school. The baseball experiment lasted a single season, and in March 1995 Jordan announced his return to basketball with a two-word fax to the media: I'm back. He played the remainder of the season, and the Bulls lost in the playoffs to the Orlando Magic, a defeat that Jordan took as a challenge.

The 1995-96 season was the greatest in the history of the Bulls and one of the greatest in the history of the sport. The Bulls won 72 games and lost 10, a record that stood for twenty years, and they won the championship against the Seattle SuperSonics. Jordan was named Most Valuable Player and Finals Most Valuable Player, and the team was widely described as the best ever assembled. The season was also the subject of The Last Dance, the documentary series released in 2020, which brought Jordan's story to a new generation and renewed the debate about his place in history.

The Bulls won two more championships, in 1997 and 1998, completing a second three-peat. The 1997 Finals against the Utah Jazz included the Flu Game, in which Jordan, suffering from food poisoning or flu, scored 38 points in a victory in Salt Lake City, a performance that has become one of the most famous in sports history. The 1998 Finals, also against the Jazz, ended with Jordan's final shot as a Bull: a jump shot over Bryon Russell with five seconds left in Game 6, which won the championship. The shot is the most replayed in basketball history, and it was a fitting end to the dynasty. After the season, Jackson left, Pippen was traded, and Jordan retired for a second time.

5. The Wizards years and the businessman

Jordan returned to basketball for a second time in 2001, signing with the Washington Wizards, a team he part-owned, and playing two seasons before retiring for the final time in 2003, at forty. The Wizards years were less successful: the team did not reach the playoffs, and Jordan, though still a capable player who averaged more than twenty points a game, was no longer the dominant force he had been. The comeback was criticised by some as a tarnishing of his legacy, and defended by others as a demonstration of his love for the game and his willingness to mentor young players. His final game, in Philadelphia in April 2003, ended with a standing ovation from the crowd, including the opposing fans.

Jordan's second career, as a businessman, has been as successful as his first. The Air Jordan line, launched by Nike in 1985, became one of the most successful brands in sports, and Jordan's partnership with Nike, in which he receives a share of the revenue, made him the first athlete to build a lasting business empire from his playing career. He also became the owner of the Charlotte Hornets, the first former player to become the majority owner of an NBA team, a position he held until selling his majority stake in 2023. His business success has made him a model for athletes who want to control their own brands, and it has changed the economics of sports endorsements.

Jordan has also been involved in philanthropy, including donations to education and to social justice causes, and he has spoken publicly about race and about the responsibilities of athletes. His public statements have been fewer than those of some of his contemporaries, and he has been criticised for his reluctance to take political positions, notably for his remark that Republicans buy sneakers too, a comment he later said was a joke. The remark has become a symbol of the tension between commerce and activism in sports, and of the choices that athletes face when their brand depends on a broad audience.

6. The game: how Jordan played

Jordan's game was built on a combination of athleticism, skill and will that has rarely been matched. He was 6 feet 6 inches tall, with a vertical leap that was measured at 48 inches, and he could hang in the air longer than his opponents, a quality that made his jump shots and his dunks seem to defy gravity. He was also a skilled shooter, a passer and a defender, and he improved every part of his game over the course of his career. His fadeaway jump shot, developed in the 1990s to preserve his body, became one of the most unstoppable moves in the sport, and his defensive intensity — he was named to the All-Defensive First Team nine times — set him apart from other scorers.

His competitiveness was legendary. Jordan was known for trash-talking opponents, for taking personal offence at slights real and imagined, and for using them as motivation. He once scored 69 points against Cleveland after being criticised by a reporter, and he famously told an opponent who had trash-talked him that he would score on him at will. The competitiveness extended to practice, where he challenged teammates, and to his life off the court, where he was a famously intense gambler and golfer. His teammates have described him as demanding and sometimes cruel, and also as a leader who made everyone around him better, because no one wanted to let him down.

Jordan's influence on the game is visible in the players who followed him. Kobe Bryant, who modelled his game on Jordan's, from the fadeaway to the footwork, was his most direct heir, and LeBron James, who has surpassed Jordan in some statistical categories, is the player most often compared with him. The comparison between Jordan and James is the central debate in basketball, and it turns on the question of what matters most: championships, statistics, longevity, or impact on the game. Jordan's supporters point to his six championships without a Finals loss and to his perfect record in the Finals; James's supporters point to his longevity, his versatility, and his total statistics. The debate is unlikely to be settled, and it is a measure of Jordan's standing that it continues.

7. Legacy: the greatest, and the argument that follows

Jordan's legacy is secure in the record books: six championships, five Most Valuable Player awards, six Finals Most Valuable Player awards, ten scoring titles, fourteen All-Star selections, and induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009. He is the only player to win the scoring title, the Most Valuable Player award and the Defensive Player of the Year award in the same season, and his career scoring average of 30.1 points per game is the highest in NBA history. These are the numbers, and they are the foundation of his claim to be the greatest.

His legacy goes beyond the numbers. Jordan changed basketball from a team sport that was popular in America into a global entertainment business. His partnership with Nike created the modern athlete brand, his performances on television made the NBA a global product, and his films and commercials, including Space Jam in 1996, made him a cultural figure beyond sports. He was the first athlete to be marketed as a global icon, and the model he created has been followed by every star since, from Tiger Woods to Lionel Messi. The globalisation of basketball, and of sports marketing, owes more to Jordan than to any other single athlete.

The argument about the greatest player of all time will continue, and it should, because it is a way of talking about what greatness means. Is it winning, or is it longevity? Is it dominance, or is it versatility? Jordan's case rests on dominance: for a decade, no one was better, and when the championship was on the line, he won. The biography on this site gives the verified facts of his life; the articles linked below place him among the other great athletes, from Muhammad Ali to Pelé, and show how his career fits into the longer history of sport.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica — Michael Jordan
• Wikipedia — Michael Jordan
• Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame — Michael Jordan
• NBA — Michael Jordan career stats

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• Who Was Alexander the Great? — Alexander the Great built one of history's largest empires before dying at 32. This explains his conquests, his cities and the debate over his legacy.
• Who Was Alfred Nobel? — Alfred Nobel invented dynamite, held 355 patents and founded the Nobel Prizes. This explains his explosives empire, his will and the prizes' legacy.
• Who Was Allama Iqbal? — Allama Iqbal was Pakistan's national poet, whose ideas shaped the case for Pakistan. This explains his poetry, his philosophy and his legacy.
• Who Was Benazir Bhutto? — Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to lead a Muslim-majority country, serving as prime minister of Pakistan in 1988-90 and 1993-96.
• Who Was Bob Marley? — Bob Marley took reggae from Jamaica to the world and became a symbol of peace, resistance and unity. This explains his life, his music and his legacy.
• Who Was Bruce Lee? — Bruce Lee was the martial artist and actor who carried Hong Kong action cinema to the world and founded Jeet Kune Do, leaving a lasting influence.
• Who Was Charles Darwin? — Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, became the foundation of modern biology.
• Who Was Charles Dickens? — Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist of the Victorian era, whose serialised novels mixed comedy, social criticism and unforgettable characters.
• Who Was Charlie Chaplin? — Charlie Chaplin created the Little Tramp, the most famous screen character of the silent era, and directed classics City Lights and The Great Dictator.
• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Franz Beckenbauer? — Franz Beckenbauer was a German footballer known as Der Kaiser, who won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and as manager in 1990.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Prophet Muhammad? — The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. This explains his life, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.