Michael Jeffrey Jordan was born on February 17, 1963, in Brooklyn, New York. When he was still very young, Michael and his family moved to Wilmington, North Carolina. Michael is the secondest youngest of five children. He has two older brothers, Ronnie and Larry, an older sister named Delores, and a younger sister, Roslyn. Michael's Dad, James, worked at an electric plant, and his mother, Deloris, worked at a bank. The family lived in a two-story house in Wilmington, a quiet town on the Cape Fear River. Michael's parents worked hard to provide a comfortable life for their family. Michael learned about hard work and the value of money. He didn't get his first bike until he was 16!. Michael faced some racism growing up. In a dispute over a seat on a school bus, a white girl called him "nigger" and spat on him. Michael hit her and was suspended from school. Michael's parents did not blame him. They explained to him that there was racism in the world but that his job was to rise above it. As a kid, Michael played baseball, basketball, and football. His favorite was baseball. Michael also spent hours playing basketball in his backyard on a court his dad had built. Michael played a lot of one-on-one games against his brother Larry, who was taller, a year older, and more talented than Michael. Larry always won. That made Michael determined to become a better player. Michael played three sports as a ninth-grader at D.C. Virgo Junior High School, Wilmington. He pitched and played in the outfield on the baseball team, played quarterback on the football team, and was a guard on the basketball team. Michael's first dunk came during a junior varsity game. He was 5' 8" tall at the time. He just took off, and the dunk happened so fast that he wasn't sure what he had done. But he sure loved the feeling!
Tough Times at Laney High
Can you believe that Michael Jordan did not make his high school basketball team? It's true. In 1978, Michael was a 5' 11" 10th-grader at Laney High School, in Wilmington, North Carolina. The varsity coaches felt he was too small and not good enough to play on their team. They thought he was better suited to the junior varsity team. Michael was disappointed, but he kept practicing hard. It paid off. In his first season with the jayvve team, he averaged 25 points per game! He also worked hard at doing well in the classroom. Michael had not been interested in school as a ninth grader, and his grades had been poor. But Michael's parents had had some serious talks with him about the importance of school. His grades started to improve when he realized that he could be a good student. Between the the 10th grade and 11th grades, Michael grew to 6' 3". Because he had improved as a player, he made the varsity and got to play with his older brother Larry. Michael played so well in his junior season that he was invited to attend the Five-Star Camp in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during the summer before his senior year. Five-Star is a camp where the best U.S. high school basketball players compete against one another. Top coaches run the drills and games while college scouts look for recruits. Michael won 10 trophies at the camp, including two MVP awards. Michael had also pitched and played outfield on Laney High's varsity baseball team. But he said that his performance at the Five-Star Camp was the turning point of his life as an athlete. He realized that basketball was his best sport, and he set a goal: to earn a college basketball scholarship. By his senior year at Laney High, Michael had grown to 6' 5". He had also grown as a student and as a player. He graduated with a B+ average. On the court, he averaged 27.8 points per game as a senior. And Michael achieved his goal: He earned a college basketball scholarship to the University of North Carolina.
College, Man!
Michael wasn't expected to become a star at the University of North Carolina (UNC). His coaches thought he had a chance to be a good player. Even Michael was unsure at first if he belonged on the team. After all, the UNC Tar Heels had been good enough to play in the NCAA championship game the previous season. (They had lost to Indiana University.) But any doubts about Michael's talent quickly disappeared. In his first practice game, Michael made an eye-popping dunk that had him asking himself, "Was that really me?" Head coach Dean Smith later put Michael in the starting lineup at guard. It was a special honor-only three freshmen had ever started for Coach Smith at North Carolina. UNC already had two outstanding players in James Worthy and Sam Perkins, so Michael spent his first season just trying to blend in. But he still averaged 13.5 points per game and was named the Atlantic Coast Conferance (ACC) Rookie of the Year. The Tar Heels made it back to the NCAA championship game. They faced the Georgetown University Hoyas, who were led by seven-foot center Patrick Ewing. The game was played on March 29, 1982, in the Superdome, in New Orleans, Louisiana. It was an exciting contest that wasn’t decided until the final seconds. UNC was trailing, 62-61, with 15 seconds left to play. As would happen many times in his career, Michael had the ball with the game on the line. The freshmen coolly launched a 17-foot jump shot. It went in! UNC won, 63-62, to earn its first national title in 25 years. "The Shot" made Michael famous among college basketball fans. Coach Smith wanted Michael to becime a better all-around player, so he gave him a list of things to work on during the summer. One of them was improving his defense. When Michael returned for his sophomore season, he had improved by leaps and bounds. He was named UNC’s defensive player of the game 12 times. He also led the team in scoring, with 20 points per game. Michael was named the 1982-83 College Basketball Player of the Year by The Sporting News. But UNC lost to the University of Georgia in the third round of the NCAA tournament. The loss disappointed Michael so much that he worked even harder and became better than ever. During his junior year, he led the ACC in scoring, with a 19.6 points per game average, and won the Wooden Award as the best player in the country. (He was also honored again as The Sporting News College Basketball Player of the Year.) At the end of the season, Michael had a big decision to make: Should he leave college before graduation and turn pro? Michael’s mom wanted him to stay in school. But Michael felt that playing another season of college basketball would not challenge him. Becoming a pro would also mean his family wouldn’t have to worry about money. Michael thought about this decision for six weeks. He had long talks with his parents, Coach Smith, and former UNC teammate James Worthy, who had left for the NBA before his senior season. On May 5, 1984, Michael announced that he was entering the NBA draft. He would not be returning for his senior year. During his three years at UNC, Michael had led the Tar Heels to an 88-13 record and averaged 17.7 points per game. The school retired his jersey number, 23, after he left. The jersey now hangs in the Smith Center on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill. When Michael left UNC, a national basketball magazine wrote, "If Michael Jordan isn’t one day considered to be the greatest player in Norh Carolina history, then the guy who takes that honor in the future must be from another galaxy." Not bad for a guy who wasn’t supposed to become a star. Dunking for GoldIn the summer of 1984, Michael played on the U.S. Men’s Olympic Basketball Team under head coach Bobby Knight. Many people considered the 1984 U.S. squad to be one of the best Olymipic basketball teams ever. It had such college players as Michael, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin. All three would become NBA stars. (NBA players were not allowed to compete in the Games until 1992.) The Olympic team worked hard to get ready for the games. Coach Knight was very demanding. "Coach Knight helped me to concentrate and do things without a lot of lollygagging around," said Michael. Michael’s play awed the other teams. He scored 14 points against China, 20 against Canada, and 16 against Uruguay. In a game against Spain, Michael jumped over and dribbled around defenders to score 24 points. The U.S. won the game 101-68. Coach Antonio Diaz-Miguel of Spain said of Michael, "He’s like rubber. He is not a man." The U.S. met Spain again in the gold medal game, and Michael scored 20 points. The U.S. won all eight of its games by an average of 32.1 points per game. Michael led the team in scoring with an average of 17.1 points per game. He proved that he had the talent to play in the NBA. But how good would he be? The world was about to learn the answer. Two months after the Olympics, Michael would play his first regular-season game with the Chicago Bulls.
Afterwards, after the Olympics, we all pretty much know what happened!
