The beginning of Episode 6 of ESPN’s “The Last Dance” docuseries showed an old Michael Jordan commercial where the NBA icons spoke about his life not being as fun as everybody thought it was.
If you value your solitude, being Jordan when he was the most popular athlete in the world in the ’90s would have been a nightmare.
“It’s funny, a lot of people say they’d like to be Michael Jordan for a day or for a week, but let them try to be Michael Jordan for a year, see if they like it,” Jordan said in the commercial. “I don’t think you can see the true Michael Jordan for just a day. I don’t think they quite understand it’s no fun.”
Jordan only experienced peace when he was at home with his family or in his hotel room on the road. Besides those two venues, Jordan was under pressure to be on with people all the time and Chicago Bulls senior director of public and media relations, Tim Hallam, saw it first-hand in the ’90s.
Almost everyone wanted to be like Jordan back in the day, which is why Gatorade came out with the “Be like Mike” commercial. However, Hallam was one of the few people who knew that being Jordan was an “impossible task.”
“I think what people don’t realize is that from the moment Michael Jordan leaves his hotel room, the spotlight is on him,” Hallam said in The Last Dance. “Everybody in the world wanted to either see him, talk to him. They all wanted a piece of him in some way or another. He was under pressure to be on all the time with people. I wouldn’t want to be like Mike. It’s an impossible task.”
Jordan is arguably the greatest player in NBA history. He won six rings, six Finals MVPs, five regular-season MVPs and 10 scoring titles with the Bulls in the ’90s.
The Bulls three-peated twice and went 6-0 in the NBA Finals during the Jordan era.
Jordan is no longer in the limelight. He probably enjoys his privacy.
Per Forbes, Jordan has a net worth of $3.2 billion in 2024. Jordan’s salary during his NBA career with the Bulls and Washington Wizards totaled $90 million, but he has earned $2.4 billion (pre-tax) from Nike, Hanes and Gatorade (to name a few).
Jordan sold his majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets in 2023, a deal that valued the NBA franchise at $3 billion.
Jordan’s first contract with Nike, signed in 1984, was worth $500,000 per year, plus royalties. Nike paid him around $260 million (pre-tax) over its past fiscal year.
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