NBA legend Michael Jordan once signed a pair of Air Jordans for a fan who jumped out of a moving car to meet him.
It happened in August 1992.
“As the day progressed, more people kept hearing about Michael being in the neighborhood,” Howard Little told Chicago Sports historian Jack Silverstein. “I remember one guy, he was driving his car down the street and he looked right and looked left and said, ‘Michael, Michael!’ He jumped out of his car but was still in drive and it was rolling down the street. ‘Hey Michael!’ He was wearing Air Jordans and took his shoe off and asked him to sign his shoe. Michael started laughing and signed his shoe.”
“I forgot about the shoe guy!,” Alexis Little said. “That guy totally almost crashed his car trying to get his shoe signed.”
Jordan was arguably the most popular person on the planet while he played for the Chicago Bulls. If you value your privacy, being Jordan would have been a nightmare.
Jordan only experienced peace when he was at home with his family or in his hotel room on the road. Outside those two venues, Jordan was under pressure to be with people all the time and Bulls senior director of public and media relations Tim Hallam saw it first-hand in the ’90s.
Almost everyone wanted to be like Jordan back in the day, which is why Gatorade came out with the “Be Like Mike” commercial.
However, Hallam was one of the few people who knew that being Jordan was an “impossible task.”
“I think what people don’t realize is that from the moment Michael Jordan leaves his hotel room, the spotlight is on him,” Hallam said in The Last Dance. “Everybody in the world wanted to either see him, talk to him. They all wanted a piece of him in some way or another. He was under pressure to be on all the time with people. I wouldn’t want to be like Mike. It’s an impossible task.”
The beginning of Episode 6 of ESPN’s “The Last Dance” docuseries showed an old Jordan commercial where the NBA icon spoke about his life not being as fun as everybody thought it was.
“It’s funny, a lot of people say they’d like to be Michael Jordan for a day or for a week, but let them try to be Michael Jordan for a year, see if they like it,” Jordan said in the commercial. “I don’t think you can see the true Michael Jordan for just a day. I don’t think they quite understand it’s no fun.”
Jordan has career averages of 30.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 2.3 steals and 0.8 blocks with the Bulls and Washington Wizards. He won five MVPs, one Rookie of the Year Award, one Defensive Player of the Year Award, six championships, six Finals MVPs, 10 scoring titles and three steals titles.
Jordan is first in NBA history in points per game, fourth in steals, fifth in field goals and second in player efficiency rating. He holds the NBA record for most points (63) scored in a playoff game.
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