ESPN’s Wright Thompson penned down a special article for the 50th birthday of Michael Jordan nearly a decade ago. In this column, Jordan took readers through the entire journey of his distinguished career. As he was about to touch the golden jubilee, the Chicago Bulls legend even spoke about the topic of death at one point.
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His Airness had an interesting take when discussing death. The five-time NBA MVP disclosed that he had always believed he would die young.
“I always thought I would die young,” Jordan said.
While this thought made his mother Deloris Jordan extremely livid, Thompson’s write-up explained that MJ always wanted to be “powerful” and “young” instead of witnessing a dip in his health, resulting in a tragic death eventually.
“His mother would get angry with him when he’d talk to her about it. He just could never imagine being old. He seemed too powerful, too young, and death was more likely than a slow decline. The universe might take him, but it would not permit him to suffer the graceless loss and failure of aging,” Thompson’s article read.
Being dubbed “The Black Jesus” by the likes of Larry Bird, LeBron James, and Reggie Miller, enthusiasts have seemed to have forgotten that Jordan isn’t immortal.
“When I met Michael Jordan for the first time, I literally couldn’t believe it was him… The dude looked like Jesus Christ to me, he was Black Jesus to me and nobody could tell me any different,” James said.
“I didn’t think Michael Jordan was real.” @KingJames reflected on meeting MJ for the first time on WRTS: After Party — catch the full episode on our YouTube. pic.twitter.com/y2SwtsGWEn
— UNINTERRUPTED (@uninterrupted) January 24, 2024
For all concerned fans, the Hall of Famer’s health isn’t deteriorating. Thanks to a healthy lifestyle he adopted to be the greatest basketball player, he’s actually one of the fittest 61-year-olds. Barring a few reports of Mike suffering from a form of melanosis, a non-life threatening conjunctival pigmented lesion, there’s been no news of him suffering any illness.