His ability to jump and do insane dunks and other extremely athletic feats on the court earned him the moniker "Air Jordan." In 1984, he was selected third overall by the Chicago Bulls. He won the NBA's Most Valuable Player title five times in his career. He won the NBA Finals MVP award six times in a row. His number 23 has been retired by both the Bulls and the University of North Carolina.
He is also one of only three players (Larry Bird is the other) to score 100 points in a game while playing all 50 minutes of regulation play. The other two games that were played at the time: 1972 Olympic Game 1 and 1992 Olympics Game 1.
Number 2 behind James for most consecutive NBA season starts: 199-0-13. Number 1: James isn't the first player to ever start 200 games, but he may as well be since no one else comes close. The record is held by Kobe Bryant with 940 games started over 14 seasons.
Kobe broke down the numbers for us: "I've started more than half of Los Angeles' games each year since entering the league in 1996, so I know what it takes to be an impact player for your team."
In 1998, Jordan announced that this would be his last season in the NBA, setting a new record for highest-scoring season by a player. He averaged 46.4 points per game that year.
In NBA history, Air Jordan had an incredible 11-year run. During that time, he won six NBA championships and was named to 11 consecutive All-Star teams. Jordan also won five MVP Awards and ten scoring crowns, making him the single greatest scorer and most valuable player over a decade...
However, despite his dominance on the court, there was one thing that stood in the way of Michael Jordan being considered a true all-time great: His career average of 26.4 points per game isn't great enough to rank among the top 10 scorers of all time.
But before we get into why Jordan's career average isn't great enough to rank among the top 10 scorers of all time, let's take a look at the other players who have been given the title of "Goat".
The first player to be given this nickname was Allen Iverson, and since then, many more players have been given this moniker.
He was regarded as one of the greatest basketball players of all time, dominating the game from the mid-1980s until the late 1990s. Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to six NBA titles and was named the league's Most Valuable Player five times. His appearance in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona helped make that event popular worldwide.
Michael Jordan entered the National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1984 as a 19-year-old freshman at the University of North Carolina. In his first season, he led the team to an undefeated regular season and victory in the NCAA Tournament before losing to Ralph Sampson's Virginia Commonwealth Rams in the final. He is still today's all-time leader in points scored (25,933), field goals made (14,337), and field goal attempts (29,329).
After leaving North Carolina after one season, Jordan joined the Chicago Bulls for the 1988-89 season. That same year, he became the first player to score 100 points in a game when he did so against the New York Knicks on April 4, 1989. He went on to score 102 points against the Seattle SuperSonics a few months later, setting a new NBA record for most points in a game. Jordan finished that first season with 27.4 million votes, more than the other three candidates combined. He has not been voted out of the top spot since.
Michael Jordan, an American basketball player, led the Chicago Bulls to six National Basketball Association (NBA) titles (1991–93, 1996–98). He was named NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) five times (1988, 1991, 1992, 1996, and 1998) and Defensive Player of the Year in 1988. At the time of his retirement, he was the all-time leading scorer in NBA history.
Jordan was born on January 4, 1963, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Michael James Jordan, was a postal worker and high school basketball coach; his mother, Judy, was a secretary. When Michael was two years old, the family moved to South Carolina, where his father had been hired as a basketball coach at the University of South Carolina. They later moved back to Philadelphia, where Michael played baseball until the age of 12, when he quit to focus on basketball.
He began playing varsity basketball for the Jesuit High School Falcons in Philadelphia. In 1980, when he was just 16 years old, he led them to their first City League title. That same year, he set a national high school record by scoring 50 points in a game. After graduating from Jesuit in 1981, he went on to play at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for three seasons.
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