NBA 75: At No. 1, Michael Jordan used his ferocious drive, superior skills and athleticism to become the best ever (2024)

(Editor’s note: Welcome back toThe Athletic NBA 75. We’re re-running our top 40 players to count down every day from Sept. 8-Oct. 17, the day before the opening of the 2022-23NBA season. This piece was first published on Feb. 18, 2022.)

For the past decade, the house that Michael Jordan built has sat empty.

Behind the gates with the No. 23, at 2700 Point Lane in suburban Highland Park, Ill., the house of the man who scored 32,292 points, often by driving the lane, is still waiting for a new owner.

It will be on the market for 10 years this March despite its initial asking price almost halved to a mere $14.855 million.

The house doesn’t overlook Lake Michigan like the mansions of Glencoe. It isn’t in Chicago proper like the city estates in Lincoln Park. It doesn’t have the historical significance of the toniest homes lining the Gold Coast.

Jordan’s house is tucked away just off a busy stretch of suburban road, accessible to anyone who wants to take a picture in front of his magical number. It’s a cavernous, 32,683-square-foot Wayne Manor, except instead of a Batcave, there’s a gym and a casino.

It’s fitting there has been no buyer. Jordan’s legacy is so daunting, even his home can’t find an heir apparent.

Jordan’s other house, the one built because of his outsized success, is on 1901 W. Madison St., in Chicago, and it’s bustling on this recent game night.

The Jordan statue, conceived and installed during his brief respite from the game in the mid-1990s, now resides in an atrium abutting the Chicago Bulls arena. Fans line up to take pictures while DeMar DeRozan does his best MJ impression, taking over fourth quarters during a scoring streak that threatens one of Jordan’s records.

At first, Jordan didn’t like the United Center, which opened in 1994 while he was playing baseball, but then he won three more titles there. His legacy resides in the banners, and his statue remains a tourist attraction. The Bulls sell out night after night. “Sirius” still welcomes them on the floor. The reflected glow of the Jordan era shines on, even if the memories fade.

“You had to be there,” said Steve Schanwald, the former Bulls marketing executive. “There’s no way I could describe it if you weren’t around then or alive then.”

DeRozan, who signed with the Bulls as a free agent last summer, is proud to be playing in Jordan’s house, under the banners and retired numbers. He was 7 years old when Jordan won his final championship with the Bulls, but he remembers it “vividly.” His father, Frank, made him watch, and now nearly a quarter-century later, he’s trying to honor that legacy.

“It’s just funny because early in the season, I was watching ‘The Last Dance,’ again,” DeRozan said after a recent 38-point scoring night, “and my daughter walked in on me watching it and she asked why I’m not in the game. I’m watching (footage) from the 1990s when I was a kid, but she (saw) it’s the same arena.”

It’s funny how Jordan to this day still doesn’t look dated. That eternal modernity speaks to his persistent appeal.

These days, Jordan’s relationship with the Bulls, and Chicago itself, is cool. He doesn’t make many public appearances there.

Jordan was an executive and player for the Washington Wizards shortly after his second retirement, and now he’s the owner of the Charlotte Hornets. His post-Bulls career has been unable to match what he did on the court, aside from his eponymous shoe brand’s continued market dominance.

And the Bulls have been chasing those highs as well.

Since Jordan hit the perfect farewell shot over Bryon Russell on June 14, 1998, the Bulls haven’t been back to the NBA Finals.

This ranking is not in dispute.

It’s a formality, a wave of the hand, a tip of the cap, an admittance of the obvious.

The sky is blue. The earth is round. Michael Jordan, No. 1 on The Athletic’s NBA 75. The best player in the 75-year history of the NBA. Case closed.

There is no next. There is only one, and it’s Jordan.

“He checks all the boxes, and nobody else checks every box,” said veteran Jordan chronicler, journalist and author Sam Smith.

This isn’t new ground for him. Smith actually wrote a book about Jordan titled “There Is No Next.” Smith also wrote the seminal 1992 book “The Jordan Rules,” which humanized and demythologized Jordan at the beginning of his incredible run of winning six NBA titles in two symmetrical three-peats.

It was a long road from “The Jordan Rules” to “The Last Dance,” the documentary/hagiography of Jordan’s career that captivated the nation in the spring of 2020.

Because that just happened, the memories and memes are still fresh in our minds, it feels redundant to write about Jordan. What is left to say after a 10-episode series that gave Jordan the floor to give the final word on his career?

“Jordan’s the greatest,” Smith wrote in an email to me. “You can quote me.”

No one needs a recitation of the numbers to validate Jordan’s place in the hierarchy. But there are numbers. So many numbers.

Jordan is fifth all-time in points (32,292), but first in scoring average (30.1) and first in the analytical statistics such as PER that were tabulated later. He’s 99th all-time in regular-season games played (1,072) but 32nd in minutes played (41,011).

When it mattered, he’s second all-time in playoff points (5,987) and first in playoff scoring average (33.4). In six trips to the NBA Finals, he never experienced a Game 7.

In his third season, he scored 3,041 points. Only Wilt Chamberlain had scored 3,000 or more points in a season, and Wilt did it three times in a row in the early 1960s. No one has done it since Jordan.

He led the league in scoring from the 1986-87 season through the 1992-93 season, and after he returned from his baseball sojourn, he led the league in scoring three more times (’96-’98) as the Bulls won their second three-peat.

Jordan still has the single-game playoff record with 63 points, albeit in a loss to the Celtics in 1986 in the “God disguised as Michael Jordan” game.

But he wasn’t just a scorer, he was also the best defensive player (well, second-best if you ask Scottie Pippen) in the league. He’s third all time with 2,514 steals. Imagine if Tom Brady also played safety.

Jordan won two slam-dunk contests, including the one in 1988 at home over Dominique Wilkins that made him a legend. Could Jordan fly? It seemed so, didn’t it?

There was “The Shot” in Cleveland, “The Switch” and “The Shrug” at Chicago Stadium, “The Dagger” in Utah. There are two Olympic gold medals, one when he was in college in ’84 and one when he was the most famous basketball player on the planet in ’92. Even before he reached the NBA, Jordan showed as a freshman at North Carolina he was ready for the bright lights. Moment after moment lives on because Jordan played in the video age. Unlike some of his predecessors, you can still watch his highlights.

Jordan gained the respect of his peers and his elders early on with his talent, but he wouldn’t be truly accepted until he won a title. That took getting by the likes of Boston and Detroit. He did that, too.

In 1991, he won the scoring title, his second regular-season MVP and the NBA title, disposing of Magic Johnson and the Lakers in five games. Once he started winning, he couldn’t stop. The people around him deserve their share of the credit: Phil Jackson, Pippen and all the rest. But the spotlight was on Jordan, and from 1991 on, he always delivered.

Almost always.

Jordan’s break from basketball, his one playoff series loss between the championships, and his return in Washington showed his mortality, but they don’t take away from his legacy. It’s not that his final two seasons, the only ones where he didn’t make the playoffs, are forgotten. But maybe they reveal something else about the man behind the myths and the statistics.

“He was never afraid to fail,” Smith said. “Here’s a guy who was not only so good but so confident that he would take on any challenge.”

From the late 1980s through Jordan’s second and penultimate retirement in 1999, there was no one contender to his title as the most famous athlete in the world. Not just the most famous basketball player. He might’ve been the most famous person. Go to any corner of the world, and you’d find someone wearing Nikes, drinking a Coca-Cola or wearing a Bulls T-shirt.

But in the “image is everything” era when Jordan made exponentially more money outside of basketball from endorsem*nts, no one backed it up on the court like Jordan. He created a new world in both sports marketing and sports myth-making.

“In tennis or golf or boxing, the mystique is the individual,” Jordan’s agent David Falk said to Henry Louis Gates Jr. in a 1998 New Yorker story. “Whereas no matter how great Bill Russell or Bob Cousy was, it was the Celtics dynasty, it was always institutional. Michael changed all that. Singlehanded.”

Jordan created the team of one, much to the occasional chagrin of his “supporting cast.”

He influenced popular culture, turning the athlete into the ultimate pitchman. Gotta be the shoes? Or did the man make the style?

Magic Johnson and Larry Bird wore Converse. Michael Jordan wore Air Jordan.

“There can’t be anyone who affects society like this,” Smith said. “I think that’s why his figure and his name and his presence continues to garner attention like it has. The rest of us are just riding along.”

In Gates’ New Yorker story, Jordan said of his celebrity, “It could easily be a matter of timing where society was looking for something positive. It could easily be a sport that was gradually bursting out into global awareness at a time when I was at the top.

“And then there are the connections that I’ve had with corporate American since I started with Coca-Cola and then went to Nike which has gone global. I really, really can’t give you a sufficient answer.”

Jordan once opined that Nike turned him into a dream, but the truth is he was cut out to be a star. He was idolized by men, women and children, the perfect archetype of an athlete. He never met a camera lens that didn’t love him.

“How do you take a bad picture of him?” longtime Sports Illustrated photographer Walter Iooss Jr. said to a reporter years ago at a Chicago museum exhibition of his Jordan photographs. “It’s the truth. I almost have no pictures where he looks bad. He never flinched when a camera was near him because he knows everyone is looking at him every second he’s anywhere.”

Steve Kerr won three titles with Jordan, another two with David Robinson and Tim Duncan and then three more as a coach with the Warriors. He’s played and coached against the best players in the league since the late 1980s.

During the 2017 postseason, he joked about the “back in my day” philosophy comparing champions of yesterday to the unworthy teams of the present.

“The game gets worse as time goes on,” he said. “Players are less talented than they used to be. The guys in the ’50s would’ve destroyed everybody. It’s weird how human evolution goes in reverse in sports. Players get weaker, smaller, less skilled. I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”

The Warriors teams Kerr has coached changed the NBA, pushed it along in its evolution. Jordan’s NBA looks slower compared to today’s game. That’s how it is supposed to work.

But it doesn’t mean that Jordan would be obsolete in today’s game. His size, skill and mental ferocity would play today as they did 25 years ago.

What would Jordan, who attempted 1,778 3-pointers in his career, compared to 6,061 (and counting) for LeBron James and 5,546 for Kobe Bryant, be like in today’s game where 7-footers play like guards?

“Assuming he was in his prime playing today, I have no doubt he would have shot one million 3-pointers in practice and become a better 3-point shooter and a more high volume 3-point shooter,” Kerr said. “Besides that, he just would have been dominant emotionally, physically and spiritually, just like he was then.”

Added former Bulls teammate Stacey King: “MJ’s game would have evolved into what the game is today because he became a better 3-point shooter as he got older. Before, he was so dominant with his athleticism that he could jump over everybody. He was much faster than everybody. And he was more explosive. So he didn’t have to rely on the 3-point shot. But I guarantee you MJ would have evolved in this game.”

Jordan was an evolutionary agent, bringing unbelievable wealth to the league and turning NBA players into 360-degree stars. He couldn’t exist in today’s game because the NBA is where it is because of him. But you can imagine what it would have been like.

“I think MJ would’ve had 100 points in this era,” King said. “Because if Kobe got 81, he would have had 100.”

Physically, Jordan was a marvel. But the reason he’s incomparable to anyone, even the greats, goes beyond the shots he made.

“I mean, he is the greatest player of all time, so there’s a reason that most people agree on that,” Kerr said. “It goes beyond the shotmaking, it’s the totality of everything. He just had this incredible package of skill and knowledge and experience and it all added up to this aura he was just better than everyone by far.”

Everyone remembers the dunks, the fadeaway, the steals. But there was more to it.

“I think the most underrated aspect of Michael’s game was his emotional dominance in the arena every night,” Kerr said. “And I still have not seen that from anybody.”

Chicago native Kendall Gill, who entered the NBA in 1990, and played against Jordan before that in the local summer leagues, called it “the Mike Tyson effect.”

“Mike Tyson used to have his opponent beat before he got to the arena,” Gill said. “That’s how MJ used to have a lot of these guys.”

Kerr has shared the floor with Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal. He saw how his Warriors spooked everyone with Steph Curry and Klay Thompson firing 3s.

But Jordan’s mystique was more primal.

“There was just this sense from everybody in the gym, the opponent, the other coaching staff, the officials, fans, there was just a sense that he was better than everybody and he was going to dominate the game,” Kerr said. “And he was kind of invincible. So it went beyond his skill set and his competitiveness and his size and speed and footwork. It just went beyond all that because he was so dominant emotionally. It was like he cast a spell over every game.”

Added Nets coach Steve Nash, who was a rookie during the 1996-97 season: “It was, in a sense, alarming to play against him because you just sat there and watched him win and win and would be so dominant and be someone everyone was intimidated by.”

Gill, always one of the more well-muscled guards in the NBA, said he relished playing against Jordan. Well, most of the time.

In the first game of the Nets’ first-round playoff series against the Bulls in 1998, Gill scored a basket inside on Jordan and decided it was smart to talk a little trash.

“While we’re running back down the court, I said, ‘Yo, I’m the strongest one in Tim Grover’s camp,’ because it was kind of a power move,” Gill said of the Chicago-area trainer who gained fame in the league for remaking Jordan into a power guard.

“So later on in that game, and I’m sure you’ve seen this play, he stole the ball and I tried to run him down and he dunked the basketball and they call the foul. So he goes to the free-throw line and I’m lined up and he goes, ‘Hey KG, payback is a bitch, huh?’ I didn’t say anything but I was pissed off inside because that guy just dunked on me on national TV in front of my family, everybody in the UC (United Center).”

Tim Hardaway came into the league in 1989 with no fear, a Chicago-bred point guard fueled by everything that entails. Chicago is the home of aggressive guard play with attacking skills burnished on playgrounds and gyms on the South and West Sides. In that sense, Jordan fit right into the fabric of city basketball, Hardaway said.

“He kind of took on the identity of Chicago,” Hardaway said. “The way he played, how he played, and the way he focused on things.”

On the subject of Jordan’s mental intimidation, Hardaway could see other guards wilt under Jordan’s oppressive nature (Wilkins told Sam Smith that Jordan’s competitiveness was “almost like he was evil”), but Hardaway, a true Chicagoan, could handle it.

“I grew up in a place where you’ve got to go out there and kill your man, where it’s me to you and I know when I get the ball, it’s me,” he said. “So, naw, I wasn’t intimidated by Michael Jordan, because I grew up in that setting every day.”

Charles Oakley was Jordan’s first enforcer in Chicago and remains his close friend to this day. Jordan even wrote the foreword to his recent book. But Oakley had to experience the pain of losing to Jordan and the Bulls, as they sent him and the Knicks home in the playoffs in 1989, ’91, ’92, ’93 and ’96.

Oakley and the Knicks were the most physical team in a very physical era of the NBA. They intimidated most teams with a nasty brand of basketball. But not the Bulls.

In 1995, when Jordan returned to the league and gave the Knicks that famous double-nickel performance at Madison Square Garden, it shook up the Knicks as Oakley wrote in his new book, “The Last Enforcer”: “It was a stunning finish to a wild night that I think left some of the guys a little rattled in the locker room. Jordan was back, and maybe some guys felt we would never beat him.”

“Jordan stopped a lot of guys from winning a ring,” Oakley said. “I know he stopped the Knicks. He made (Charles) Barkley go west. Karl Malone, John Stockton, Portland. I mean, a lot of teams probably could’ve won a ring if Michael Jordan wasn’t in NBA. But he was there and you had to go through him and it wasn’t easy.”

Nor was playing with Jordan. He wasn’t always a beloved teammate because he was hard on everyone around him. But as Jordan noted, he never asked his teammates to do anything that he didn’t do. No one worked harder and no one won more often.

“Winning has a price,” he said during an emotional interview in “The Last Dance.” “And leadership has a price. So I pulled people along when they didn’t want to be pulled. I challenged people when they didn’t want to be challenged. And I earned that right because my teammates came after me. They didn’t endure all the things that I endured. Once you joined the team, you lived at a certain standard that I played the game and I wasn’t going to take anything less.”

What was it like playing in Michael Jordan’s shadow? Well, you couldn’t even win in the parking lot.

“So I have this 456 GT Ferrari and I’m with my girlfriend at the time, and she liked my car,” Gill said. “I pull up and they park it for me at the UC and we walk in. Michael and Scottie used to park inside the UC. So Michael’s Ferrari is there, but it’s a 550 Maranello. Brand new. My girlfriend goes, ‘Hey, I like that one. Can you get that one?’ I’m like, ‘That motherf*cker.’ It was the newest model Ferrari put out. I’m thinking, ‘I just can’t beat this guy.’ ”

And then the game began.

In his book, Oakley brings up the LeBron vs. Jordan debate, but Oakley admits that was just to start a conversation.

“That’s why I put that comparison, so people can have a debate,” he said. “But Mike had put the bar so high. I think LeBron passed Kobe, but he didn’t pass Mike. It’s like Corn Flakes and Frosted Flakes.”

Oakley, a Cleveland native, is a LeBron fan and marvels at how James lived up to the hype as the No. 1 pick out of high school. James is now 37 and in his 19th year in the NBA and he carries the weight of expectations from high school to this very day.

Bryant fashioned himself after Jordan, pushing himself past mental and physical limits to chase Jordan’s legacy. But it would be impossible for James or Bryant to surpass Jordan because so much of their professional and public identities are described in comparison to him. He set the pace and they gave chase.

The giants who came before, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Russell, were evolutionary marvels, but their skill sets weren’t as diverse. They couldn’t do it all.

James’ size, diverse skillset and longevity make him the evolutional descendent of Jordan. But while LeBron is recognized as the best player of his generation, he’s committed the sin of the mortal NBA superstars: he’s lost in the NBA Finals. And while players respect him, do they fear him when it counts the most?

“There’s the LeBron debate and, you know, people can, can make whatever argument they want to make there,” Kerr said. “And I think most people would probably say those are the two best players of all time.”

James played in the NBA Finals eight consecutive years (and nine of 10), a streak Jordan never came close to because of his baseball sojourn. But the difference between the two is James’ teams in Miami and Cleveland lost five of those series. James won a fourth ring with the Lakers during the NBA bubble playoffs in 2020.

James’ NBA Finals experience is messy enough to give him detractors in the age of sports debate. Jordan’s six-for-six streak in the Finals was neatly divided into two three-peats, a feat that becomes more meaningful as time goes on.

“He finished everything he started,” Smith said. “Every time, once he got there, he stayed there.”

And beyond the winning and the emotional dominance, no one will achieve his pop culture status cemented during the 1990s boom of advertising and marketing.

How many times has someone said “Be like Mike” since that Gatorade commercial first started airing? Are you singing it to yourself now?

“I mean, the concept was the only way you could be like Mike was to drink Gatorade,” said the commercial’s creator Bernie Pitzel. “But the thing I think that caught on is the whole, ‘Sometimes I dream that he is me, I’d like to see that’s how I dream to be,’ kids especially kids, you know, what you do is you sit in the backyard, in the playground, and you pretend you’re Jordan. It struck a chord. It’s just so simple.”

Added Smith: “The old cliche love of the game, he did just love playing and competing. He was the ultimate competitor, what we all would like to be if we could.”

Sometimes we dream, but that’s all we can do.

“My passion on the basketball court should have been infectious,” Jordan said at the end of “The Last Dance.” “Because that’s how I tried to play. It started with hope. Started with hope. We went from a sh*tty team to an all-time best dynasty. All you needed was one match to start that whole fire.”

As “The Last Dance” showed, despite the years piling up, Jordan’s legacy remains secure. James could win two more titles to equal Jordan’s rings, but it won’t matter.

In 25 years, when everyone ranks players once again for the league’s centennial, Jordan will still be No. 1. It doesn’t matter that Abdul-Jabbar currently has the most points in NBA history or that James could pass him before he retires. New greats will come to the NBA. There will be other players who tease us with their ability. But Jordan will still be atop the mountain.

“People forget, time moves on,” Smith said. “If you haven’t seen something, you don’t attribute as much greatness to it as something you’ve seen. Things change. But he endures.”

When it comes to ranking players, no one has next. Jordan will forever be at the top, the Michael Jordan of being Michael Jordan, the greatest there ever was, the greatest there ever will be.

Career NBA stats: G: 1,072, Pts.: 30.1, Reb.: 6.2, Ast.: 5.3, FG%: 49.7, FT%: 83.5, Win Shares: 214.0, PER: 27.9

The Athletic NBA 75 Panel points: 1,122 | Hollinger GOAT Points: 764.2

Achievements: NBA MVP (’88, ’91, ’92, ’96, ’98), 11-time All-NBA, 15-time All-Star, NBA champ (’91, ’92, ’93, ’96, ’97, ’98), Finals MVP (’91, ’92, ’93, ’96, ’97, ’98) Rookie of the Year (’85), Scoring champ (’87, ’88, ’89, ’90, ’91, ’92, ’93, ’96, ’97, ’98), Steals champ (’88, ’90, ’93), Defensive Player of the Year (’88), Hall of Fame (’95), Olympic gold (’84, ’92), NBA at 50 (’96), NBA 75th Anniversary Team (’21)

Related reading

Hollinger: Introducing GOAT Points, a way to compare players historically
NBA 75 panel: And they’re revealed … The Athletic’s panel’s ballots for best all-time players

(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; Photo: Focus on Sport / Getty Images)