Have you ever wondered why the mainstream sports media can never get enough of Michael Jordan? I mean Jordan as great a basketball player as he was, has not played in an actual NBA game in over ten years now (15 if you dismiss his meaningless stint on the Wizards). However, despite his lengthy absence from the court, his Air-ness still seems to be mentioned at least 50 times a day by the sports media and the talking heads. Strange isn’t it?
Last Weekend was All-Star weekend in the NBA, and it was the NBA’s opportunity to present a showcase of the NBA’s best and brightest. Last weekend also happened to encompass Michael Jordan’s 50th birthday. The result? If you happened to tune into any portion of All-star weekend you would promptly be bombarded with nonstop praise, banter and arguments related to why Jordan is God’s gift to basketball (if not the world). Again Michael Jordan has not played a meaningful game of basketball in over 10 years.
Usually, when a star retires there is a huge fuss made about said star, and over the next few years his spotlight tends to shrink and the focus is made on current superstars and their achievements. For whatever reason, Jordan seems to be the exception to this rule.
If one delves into an explanation into this phenomena, the easiest response is that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player who ever lived and as such his legacy much be constantly engrained in our minds even over a decade after the man’s retirement. However, in order to accept this argument one must submit to the notion that Michael Jordan is in fact the greatest player of all-time. Playing devil’s advocate and looking over Jordan’s achievements we see that in the most relevant statistics Jordan is actually matched or even eclipsed by many of his peers. For example, with respect to Championships, Career Points Per Game, and Career Total Points respectively he is easily overpowered by Bill Russell in title total (11-6), tied with Wilt Chamberlain in PPG (31.4) and is a substantial distance behind both Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (38,387) and Karl Malone (36,928) in career points (at 32,292). However, at this point I will give Jordan-heads and Stat-heads a break, and just rationalize that perhaps Jordan is universally acclaimed to be boss of basketball because as a composite of all relevant statistics, maybe he is on top. It is a scenario that while still close with many Kings of the Court, I can accept.
However, what I cannot and will not accept is the notion that Michael Jordan is so much more dominant than his peers (players like Magic, Russell, Wilt, Kareem and even Kobe), that we must universally associate greatness in sports (and even greatness in general) with Michael Jordan. Is Michael Jordan more relevant to his sport and so much more dominant in comparison with his peers than Wayne Gretzky, Muhammad Ali, Roger Federer or Jim Brown? The answer on both counts is no, and as such to my everlasting confusion I do not understand why Jordan’s name is pounded into our heads with such veracity on a daily basis.
The aforementioned confusion however, is predicated on the naive belief that the push to constantly affirm Jordan’s legacy is based on nothing more than his on-court achievements. Unfortunately, when you look at the financial interests at stake, things quickly start to clear up. Despite being way past his prime as an athlete and not playing on the court in some time, earlier this year Yahoo estimated that Air Jordan still takes in approximately 80 million dollars a year. 80 million!! For a guy, who again has not played a meaningful game of basketball in over 15 years this amount is incredible. Where does the money come from you ask? Well if you guessed the majority of it comes from his investments and his ability to run the Charlotte Bobcats into the ground you would be wrong, as the lion share of Jordan’s income is derived from endorsement deal and his partnership with Nike (the Nike deal alone nets him 60 million a year!). Again Michael Jordan has not played a meaningful game in over a decade! However, this fact apparently matters not to Nike and the general public as “Brand Jordan” currently accounts for 58 percent of the basketball shoe market (much larger than even the rest of Nike which sits in the 30s). Clearly, having Jordan attached to basketball for has long as he has has been a huge boon for Nike.
The next step in solving this mystery is asking, who exactly is Nike? The simple answer is that Nike is the world’s largest shoe and sport apparel company which earns hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each year. However, they are also one of the biggest advertisers on some of the most well known media outlets around from Sports Illustrated to ESPN and everyone in between.
Naive or not I hope the dots are beginning to connect. Without question having his name mentioned ad nauseam has been great for Michael Jordan. But it has also been great for the World’s largest sporting goods brand, media outlets and all of the people they employ.
In sum, I do not doubt Michael Jordan’s achievements on the basketball court, but given his performance relevant to his peers both within the sport and to other greats in many other sports, I have a hard time believing that Michael Jordan’s legacy can be constantly perpetuated on that alone. No doubt you should as well.
Ref: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/michael-jordan-still-earns-80-million-175222679–nba.html
