The Jordan Impact on Black America

The Shrug. 

The Shot. 

The Flu Game 

In the latter, he scored 38 points while sick as a dog. This is among the many reasons why Michael Jordan is sui generis (in a class by himself) when it comes to professional basketball. His willpower and resilience are in my view unmatched in the history of sports. 

Those who remember Michael and his exploits on the court recall his high wire, acrobatic shots along with his penchant for being able to dominate a game. His vast reservoirs of energy made him seem superhuman at times — a relentless, high-stakes competitor who was always in attack mode. 

Michael Jordan: The Life is a biography that has had a profound impact on my life as a Black American. Written by the prominent sportswriter and legendary journalist Ronald Lazenby, it reveals the dual nature of Jordan’s character, on and off the court as a part of his larger-than-life narrative. 

Lazenby adroitly weaves Jordan's storyline from interviews with his coaches; Jordan's friends, teammates, and family members; and interviews with Jordan himself to deliver the first true exegesis of Michael as a player, media icon, and man. 

The book covers nearly thirty years of his journey in college as well as in the pros. Lazenby watched Jordan’s meteoric ascension from a skinny rookie with the Chicago Bulls to a popular societal figure leading to chants of “I wanna be like Mike.” All of this came to symbolize a broader narrative around Black Americans and our continual struggles to overcome racism and discrimination throughout the nation. 

Born on February 17, 1963, Michael Jeffrey Jordan, also affectionately known as MJ, played fifteen seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA), winning six championships with the Chicago Bulls. He is now the principal owner and chairman of the NBA Charlotte Hornets. In 2016, Jordan achieved the distinction of becoming the first billionaire player in NBA history, with an estimated net worth in 2022 of $2.1 billion. 

While residing in Chicago during the nineties during Jordan’s glory years, I found myself mesmerized in front of the television whenever the Bulls played. Michael had swagger and a rare confidence about him as a relentless competitor. I loved watching his “take all prisoners, don’t f**** with me” attitude towards the teams he played against, with opposing players often facing a major price to pay if they ever made him mad or disrespected him. 

His tidal wave of dominance against those he was competing with was legendary. I reveled in his ability to wreak havoc on those attempting to stop him from having this way. 

Jordan, however, didn't face the easiest of paths in his ascension as a college basketball star and NBA legend. The book paints a picture of his upbringing in Wilmington N.C amid its sobering racial history. Lazenby, in fact, once told Sports Illustrated that he believed that the root of Jordan's animosity came from North Carolina roots as a KKK haven and racist hotbed. 

In a striking excerpt in the book, Jordan shared with Lazenby the story of when he was suspended from high school in 1977 after tossing a soda at a girl who verbally hurled the N-word in his direction. 

"So I threw a soda at her," Jordan is quoted as saying. "I was really rebelling. I considered myself a racist at the time. Basically, I was against all white people. “I considered myself a racist at the time.”

Michael Jordan: The Life goes on to discuss the airing in late 1977 of Alex Haley’s award-winning miniseries Roots which explored the African American experience with slavery. Jordan recounted being deeply transfixed and moved by the series. As shared in the book. 

“It was hundreds of years of pain that they put us through, and for the first time, I saw it from watching Roots,” he explained years later. “I was very ignorant about it initially, but I really opened my eyes about my ancestors and the things that they had to deal with.” 

Adds Lazenby: “He hadn’t had any overwhelming personal experience with racism, he would explain later. But the knowledge of America’s ugly past was so infuriating, it occupied his mind. Everywhere he turned there were things he hadn’t noticed before, things that only raised more questions about racism and injustice and how it affected his own family.”

The experience, says Lazenby, “brought Jordan face to face with his own selfishness for the first time.” It would, he says, “be one of the dominant themes of his career, learning to channel the tremendous drive and ego of his competitive nature into a team game.” 

This undoubtedly had an impact on Jordan’s tough mindset and the swagger he displayed on the basketball court. Moreover, Lazenby believed that Jordan’s ascension became "an economic story, a black power story,” one that’s not wedded in politics or protests, but “comes right off the Coastal Plain of North Carolina and out of the African-American experience."

As Roland Lazenby said in an interview: "They had to focus on economic rights. That's the only way they got ahead. Nobody, black or white, made any money in sharecropping. It was a disastrous economic system. But [Michael Jordan's] mother's father was a badass as a sharecropper. He kicked ass, came to own his own land, and determined his own fate. His mother, although she didn't get along well with her father, was just like him, locked in on economic success."

This perhaps is the greatest Jordan family legacy passed down to Michael, the impact he has had on Black kids and teens — a shining example of what hard work and persistence look like in pursuit of a dream.