An early resistance from the Chicago Bulls kickstarted the journey of Michael Jordan to stardom as his contract renegotiations as a rookie failed. Yet, it did not adversely affect his performance for the franchise, as the shooting guard was not driven by his income in that period. In 2005, the 6x champion opened up about that phase of his early NBA career in an interview with Cigar Aficionado.
Advertisement
The Bulls selected Jordan as the third overall pick in the first round of the 1984 NBA draft. Upon being asked about the salary of his rookie deal, he stated, “People are going to love this,” before explaining the structure.
“It was a seven-year deal. I averaged about $850,000 a year. The first year’s compensation was $650,000. There was no signing bonus.”
During the rookie season, Jordan had attempted to get a raise through the addition of perks in his contract. The city of Chicago at that time had moved far away from the game of basketball but Michael was confident of bringing the crowd back into the arena.
“We tried to get an attendance clause. They were averaging 6,000 people a game. So we thought, OK, we’re going to ask for an attendance clause”.
So, his agent, David Falk, went to visit the owner of the Bulls, Jonathan Kovler, to renegotiate the contract for the New Yorker. Jonathan was far from impressed with the idea as Jordan revealed, “Kovler said, ‘We’re not going to give him an attendance clause because if we draft him at the three spot, he’d better put people in the seats”. “So they never gave us an attendance clause,” he further added, looking back on that period.
Despite this significant failure, the 6’6 guard remained professional with his approach as he mentioned,
“Money didn’t drive me at that time, so I wasn’t worried about it”.
It rather drove the youngster as he became determined to earn his status out on the basketball court. Jordan eventually succeded with that approach as he highlighted, “Once I signed my contract, I felt like, ‘Let’s go out and earn the money’. And, I was the highest-paid rookie at the time”.
How Michael Jordan disrupted the NBA salary structure in 1996
During the early 1990s, Jordan was earning in the region of three to four million dollars each season from salaries. Despite those becoming his first three-peat era, he was not the highest-paid player in the league. It stayed that way even after his hiatus and fourth championship win in 1996.
Following that, Michael entered the contract renewal talks with the Bulls as his demands saw a significant increase. That time, Falk had a trick up his sleeves – a $25 million offer from the New York Knicks. Jodan’s camp thus asked for a substantially better offer than that, as the Chicago franchise had to oblige to retain their talisman.
Ahead of the 1996/97 season, he signed a one-year $30.14 million deal to become the first-ever NBA player to earn more than $20 million a season. After another championship win, he extended his stay in Illinois by agreeing to a $33.14 million salary in 1997. These contract offers made him by far the highest-paid player in the league. In fact, the second-highest-paid star at that time, Patrick Ewing, was behind him by a margin of more than $10 million.
It further cemented Mike’s celebrity status in the league as his popularity rose to an all-time high. The face of the NBA turned everything around for all the players in the league with these two deals. Years after that, the league is perhaps witnessing a ripple effect of that.
