If anyone deserves 700 pages of prose, it would be Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player and most famous athlete on earth. Jordan redefined professional basketball. He appeared at the end of the Magic Johnson, Larry Bird era, an era that rescued the NBA from the doldrums of drug scandals and unimaginative play.

“God disguised as Michael Jordan”

Jordan is a player who at the beginning of his career could have predicted that he would win 6 NBA championships and reach iconic level. In every setting, on the basketball court, at the casino, on the practice field or on the team bus, Jordan was the most dominant figure in a world full of dominant figures. Alpha of Alpha, Jordan commands, commanding attention, respect, fascination and obsession.

Jordan is the consummate artist on the basketball court.

Everyone wanted to be like Jordan, from the baggy long shorts he wore to replace the short shorts of the 1980s to the sleek shaved head that inspired generations of men from ditch the comb-over hairstyle. And everyone wants to have Air Jordans in their shoe closet. The first Air Jordan version appeared in 1985, now there are 37 versions, bringing in revenue of 5 billion USD .

30 years ago, parents got mad when they saw their children hanging pictures of black athletes in their bedrooms. Jordan changed that. He crossed the racial divide. You are not black. He is not white. I’m Michael. Or as Larry Bird once said, he is “God disguised as Michael Jordan.”

During the 90s, Michael Jordan reached the level of popularity of Michael Jackson in the 1980s. Both MJ characters crossed racial lines and were number one figures. At the peak of Jordan’s popularity, a staggering 40% of all NBA merchandise sales were related to the Chicago Bulls.

MJ has terrifying drive and desire

Author Lazenby spent nearly thirty years covering MJ’s career from college to professional football. He witnessed Jordan’s growth from a scrawny rookie to a global sports ambassador.

MJ and 5 children. The two twin girls, now 9 years old, are with his second wife.

“I love baseball,” Jordan said while attending Laney High School in Wilmington, “It’s my number one sport.” He didn’t even want to be tall enough to play basketball. “Height is within you,” Deloris’ mother told him. Luckily for the future of the NBA, Jordan’s baseball skills weren’t great enough.

But MJ’s love for baseball was so great that in 1994, when he had all the success in basketball, MJ announced his retirement from his career to switch to baseball. The test failed. In 1995, he returned to the NBA, leading the Chicago Bulls to three consecutive championship titles. During the Bulls’ 6 championship seasons, MJ was named the “NBA Most Valuable Player” of the season.

Lazenby also witnessed a Jordan with more fearsome and insatiable drive and desire than any of his fans could ever know. Shows how frustrated Jordan was with his Bulls teammates, coaches and team officials who couldn’t or wouldn’t rise to the same level of greatness that Jordan demanded of himself in every practice and every game. fight.

MJ is absolutely an artist on the basketball court. All of his flaws in the game are easily overshadowed by his great talent. It’s hard to say a bad word about a man when your mouth hangs open as you watch him glide through the air, with a combination of grace and strength that can accurately be described as superhuman.

Unanswered questions

The book takes us inside the Jordan family, which is torn apart by MJ’s wealth, and the siblings’ desire to compete for money. We also see the painful details of MJ’s father being killed.

On July 23, 1993, returning home after spending the day playing golf, Mr. James Jordan pulled over to the side of the road to take a nap. Daniel Andre Green and Larry Martin Demery saw a luxurious red Lexus SC400 and had the idea to rob the car. Green shot and killed James while he was sleeping in his car. His body was found on August 3 in a swamp.

Because his body was in an advanced state of decomposition, he was not identified until August 13 with the help of dental records provided by his family dentist. Green and Demery made several calls from Mr. James’ cell phone and were quickly arrested, and sentenced to life in prison.

MJ currently lives with his second Cuban-born wife, Yvette Prieto.

Jordan is a gambler. I don’t need sleep. He can stay up all night, partying, smoking cigars in strip clubs, playing golf with a fervor that those of us who don’t live at that level of intensity can never imagine.

He parties with rock stars, becomes a prisoner of his own fame, unable to escape his hotel room when traveling, because his mere presence causes chaos.

Lazenby doesn’t try to hide Jordan’s selfishness. “I think about myself first, the team second,” Jordan said late in his career. “I want the team to win, but I also want me to be the reason they win.”

What many people will be looking for from the book are answers to some questions about Jordan. About his huge gambling debt, about the check connecting him to a convicted drug dealer, about the murky circumstances surrounding his father’s murder. About the accusation that his father sexually abused his older sister as a teenager, which his sister told about in another book. About how much money he paid his mistress Karla Knafel to keep their relationship a secret…

Those questions are not answered here, and it is unfair to ask author Lazenby to do the impossible.