Michael Jordan Struggled With Being The ‘Most Recognized Athlete’ In The World While Playing For Bulls: ‘To Remain A Positive Model In The Public Eye For So Long, It Takes A Toll’

NBA icon Michael Jordan struggled with being the “most recognized athlete” in the world while playing for the Chicago Bulls. 

Jordan was a global superstar in the ’90s. 

“I’ve heard people say I’m the Babe Ruth of this half of the 20th century,” Jordan told ESPN in 1998. “I don’t know. Most recognized athlete? It seems that way. But, man, it’s lasted a lot longer than I anticipated. I never thought it would go on like this. I’ll tell you, to remain a positive model in the public eye for so long, it takes a toll, it takes a big chunk of you. You want it to die out, but now it’s so deep, it’s a big responsibility that just goes on and on.”

Jordan didn’t enjoy being famous. He had no privacy in public and was always in the news. 

“My fame was good at the beginning,” Jordan said in a commercial during the ’90s. “Any time people talk about you in a positive way, yeah it’s great to hear those comments. But now that you are on a pedestal, it’s not just the positive talking that you hear. You hear some points and some people taking shots at you. And that really changes the whole idea of being out there for people to see you. You wanna get behind closed doors so people don’t know you as much.”

The beginning of Episode 6 of ESPN’s “The Last Dance” docuseries showed an old Jordan commercial where the NBA legend spoke about his life not being as fun as everybody thought it was.

If you value your privacy, being Jordan when he was the most popular athlete in the world in the ’90s would have been a nightmare.

“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 only experienced peace when he was at home with his family or in his hotel room on the road. Besides those two venues, Jordan was under pressure to be on 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.”

Jordan is arguably the best player in NBA history. He averaged 30.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 2.3 steals and 0.8 blocks with the Bulls and Washington Wizards and won five MVPs, one Defensive Player of the Year Award, six championships, six Finals MVPs, 10 scoring titles and three steals titles.