Michael Jordan Will Never Talk To Sports Illustrated Again After They Ripped Him For Playing Baseball: ‘What They Said Was Totally Wrong’

NBA icon Michael Jordan will never talk to Sports Illustrated again after they ripped him for playing baseball. 

Jordan retired from the NBA in October 1993 and played baseball for the Birmingham Barons, the Double A team of the Chicago White Sox. 

Sports Illustrated wrote a story about Jordan titled, “Bag It, Michael! Jordan and the White Sox are Embarrassing Baseball.” 

“That’s the problem I still have with Sports Illustrated. I haven’t talked to them since they had that cover,” Jordan told ESPN in 1998. “And I’m going to hold to it. What they said was totally wrong. Totally wrong. They didn’t even have an understanding of the situation. I mean, if they would have at least investigated things, they would have known what I was doing. But they made their own assumption. I mean, isn’t America all about trying? The other day I saw Garth Brooks trying to play baseball. And he’s older than me, isn’t he?”

Jordan appeared in 127 games for the Barons. He batted .202, hit three home runs and drove in 51 runs while striking out 114 times. 

“I like business, sometimes. I can’t say I love it every day. It intrigues me, but it doesn’t control me. But I’m in pretty deep now. Still, if everything I’m in went belly up, it wouldn’t bother me. It would just indicate that the public has taken a whole different turn in how it thinks about the persona of Michael Jordan. I don’t want to fail, but I’m not afraid to. Which is how I was when I tried professional baseball back in 1993,” Jordan said. “Business is basically the same thing. If it doesn’t work, I can take it as a learning experience and move on. But honestly, I think I would have been a major league player if I’d played baseball all along.”

There was a baseball strike in 1995, so Jordan returned to the Chicago Bulls near the end of the 1994-95 NBA season.

If the baseball strike didn’t happen, MJ probably would have continued to play baseball. 

The basketball world is certainly happy that the baseball strike occurred. Jordan won three more championships with the Bulls after coming out of retirement. He finished his career with six rings, six Finals MVPs, five MVPs, 10 scoring titles and three steals titles. 

After the Bulls won the 1998 title against the Utah Jazz, Jordan retired for a second time. However, the UNC product came out of retirement again in 2001, this time to play for the Washington Wizards. 

Jordan played two seasons with the Wizards before retiring from basketball for good. He finished his legendary NBA career with averages of 30.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 2.3 steals and 0.8 blocks with Chicago and Washington.