Decades Before Burning Through $5,000,000 in a Night, 19 Y/O Michael Jordan Began Gambling Journey With a $5 Pool Game

Michael Jordan’s history with gambling and stories of thousands of dollars he would risk on each bet are well known. According to CBS Sports, MJ’s history with gambling goes back as far as 1982, when he was only a 19-year-old college student. MJ had written out a $5 check for a classmate after losing a game of pool. Decades later, this habit had steamrolled into a full-blown addiction that saw him lose $5,000,000 in 2007, in Las Vegas.

MJ has often spoken about his troubles with gambling, claiming that it was his competitive spirit that led him to make bets. The Chicago Bulls legend was addicted to the adrenaline rush and used the experience almost to “spark a fire inside.”

Michael Jordan’s gambling journey started way back in college, with $5 Pool bet

A student of North Carolina University, MJ was always on track for unimaginable fame. This meant that his classmate who bet on the Pool game ended up asking for a check, and decided to keep it instead of cashing it in.

The check sold years later and was sold for $12,300. Regardless, it seems as if Michael Jordan always enjoyed gambling, and soon had enough money to make much bigger bets:

“Similar evidence exists that substantiates his gambling in college. In 2019, a $5 check written in 1982 by Jordan to a fellow North Carolina student went up for auction. That money was won at the pool table, and the student, sensing Jordan’s future fame, asked for a check rather than cash. He gambled with teammates and even college coaches during drills, according to David Halberstam’s book, Playing For Keeps: Michael Jordan & the World He Made.”

Eventually, Jordan was burning through millions of dollars to fund his gambling addiction. In 2007, he surprised NFL star Adam Jones by losing $5 million at a Craps table in Las Vegas.

Michael Jordan claimed in 1993 that he didn’t have a gambling addiction

Michael Jordan himself did not believe that his gambling addiction was a problem. The Bulls star went as far as claiming that it didn’t even exist.

In 1993, his father James Jordan had explained that losing $10k for MJ was like losing 10 cents for normal people. Instead of his addiction being related to gambling, MJ simply had a competition problem and enjoyed winning.

His father claimed that MJ would not have been such a huge gambler had he not been able to afford it. That is also evidenced by the fact that he was merely spending $5 back in college because those were the kind of bets he could afford back then.