Five Things You Didn’t Know about Michael Jordan

ARIA Resort & Casino's 13th Annual Michael Jordan Celebrity Invitational At Shadow Creek - Day 3

Michael Jordan is one of, if not the, greatest basketball players in the history of the sport. His success on the hard court has ultimately lead him to accumulate a net worth of $1 billion. Jordan played 15 seasons in the NBA and accumulated more awards and records than we could ever remember. Because of that, there are probably hundreds of things that we all don’t know about Michael Jordan. However, the basics are: 6x NBA Champion, 6x NBA Finals MVP, 5x NBA MVP,  and highest scoring average ever in both the regular season and playoffs (30.12 ppg and 33.45 ppg respectively). The list could go on and on, but you get the idea that he was pretty good. Jordan was drafted by the Chicago Bulls in 1984 and would go on to build the most successful NBA and professional sports endorsement careers we’ve ever seen. To this day his name is synonymous with Nike. He is currently the principal owner of the Charlotte Hornets. Like I said, I could spend all day writing about Jordan’s sports accolades and brilliant business successes, but how about five things you probably don’t know about His Airness…

Fear of Water

Michael Jordan has a terrible fear of water and rightfully so. As a child he watched a good friend drown. Then at the age of 11 he almost drowned himself at a basketball camp. To this day, Jordan has an intense fear of water.

#12 Michael Jordan?

Everyone knows the number 23. If you are even close to sports you know that Jordan wore the #23 for almost all of his career. He took that number to a status that really can’t be touched. If you’re vaguely familiar with Jordan’s little trip the play baseball then you know he returned to the NBA wearing #45 for a short stint. What most don’t know is that for one game Jordan wore the #12. Why? Because an Orlando Magic Stadium employee stole his #23 jersey before a game.

The High School Story

Most everyone that knows of Jordan knows that in the tenth grade he was cut from his varsity basketball team. The story has been used to motivate young kids thousands and thousands of times. What you may not know is the name of the last player to make the team ahead of MJ was Leroy Smith. Jordan, to this day, uses that name whenever he checks into hotels wherever he goes.

Representing North Carolina

As most know, Jordan starred in the Looney Tunes movie Space Jam. During the movie, he tells the Tunes that he always wore his old North Carolina basketball shorts underneath his Chicago Bulls uniform for good luck. That is absollutely 100% true. He wore the shorts under every single game he played because he believed they were his good luck charm.

Rough Shooting Year
Here’s a small tidbit of statistical information from Jordan’s career. The same Jordan that was a relentless scorer and set hundreds (I’m guessing it’s probably hundreds) of scoring records at some point in his career. It wasn’t all money for Jordan as he shot 14% from three-point range his first year in the NBA. He ended up shooting around 40% for his career – which is ridiculous.

Photo by Isaac Brekken/Getty Images

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply