Despite holding his father in great reverence, there were times when Michael Jordan had to get serious with James Jordan. In particular, he put an end to James’ $2,000,000 business with Nike, which saw him run the chain of “Flight 23” stores. Michael reprimanded his father for his poor management. But, as revealed in Michael Jordan: The Life, the roles were reversed prior to this incident.
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As is the role of any parent, disciplining your child is very important. And, while MJ may have grown up to become a disciplined man on the court, the same cannot be said of his actions off of it. Such was the case when he was a child as well. However, back then he had a taskmaster in his father to discipline him. Discipline, often involved a spanking.
Before punishing his father James Jordan, Michael Jordan was the one being punished
In 1992, Michael Jordan put an end to the infamous “Flight 23” chain of stores. It was an exclusive line of stores handed to the Jordan family as part of MJ’s infamous Nike deal. However, things didn’t go as planned, primarily because it was Mike’s father, James Jordan, who was running the stores.
According to former Nike marketing guru, Sunny Vaccaro, James was a huge problem. He would constantly go out drinking and often neglected to pay suppliers. It was a mess, plain and simple. And, in 1992, His Airness had enough, punishing his father by shutting down the stores, bringing an end to a $2 million business that was losing money.
It was Michael’s way of disciplining his father. Similar, although a tad bit less violent to the discipline his father doled out on him 30 years ago. Back in the day, young MJ was rather carefree and more often than not found himself in trouble. Including a time when he played with a lamp powered by two extension cords stretched across the damp ground. The type of behavior that earned him a lot of spankings.
“Young Michael would spend his formative years on sleepy little Calico Bay Road. By all accounts, he was easy to laugh, eager to please, and hungry to entertain, which also earned him his share of spankings. ‘You had to discipline him,’ Deloris Jordan once remembered. He would test you to the limit. Michael was always getting into things.'”
Jordan’s actions were the primary cause for disciplinary action in the Jordan household. And, at one point he even got a few items banned from the house altogether.
James Jordan banned motorcycles in the Jordan household after Michael’s accident
Michael Jordan found himself in a lot of troublesome situations as a kid. He was a daredevil and loved doing crazy things. One such thing, that he still loves to this date is motorcycles. In fact, he often raced motorcycles as a kid, back when he grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina.
However, he once crashed a motorcycle when he was 12, forcing James Jordan to take action by banning motorcycles in the Jordan household.
Michael was truly a naughty child and from the looks of it, no amount of spanking, banning, or discipline seemed to work on him. But, at the end of the day, it looks like things worked out for the best.
