Within a year of playing in the NBA, Michael Jordan was a sensation throughout the country. However, the injury Jordan sustained the very next year brought more media circus around the Chicago Bulls than ever before. Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf once looked back at the whole fiasco and felt that they may have been too candid with MJ and it ended up looking like a Soap Opera.
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Jerry Reinsdorsf and the Bulls’ front office confronted three different doctors to make Michael Jordan realize the severity of his injury. But when MJ heard what the odds were, the Bulls front office’s tactic ended up backfiring on them.
In Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby, Jerry Reinsdrof recalled what led to Michael being so rigid and adamant. The doctors revealed that the injury had a 10-15% chance of ending his career. But Jordan chose to look at the other 85-90% instead.
What ended up baffling Jerry Reinsdorf even more was why Michael Jordan was so eager to come back and play on a bad Bulls roster. Given how he had done the same the previous year as well.
But that is when the Bulls owner started to grasp the will and determination a young Michael Jordan possessed. Hell-bent on making his team better, Reinsdorf finally came to a compromise and let Mike play exactly seven minutes per half at first.
“It was like a soap opera. We were too honest with Michael. We let him hear the report from the three doctors we consulted with over when he could come back. All three said the break had not healed enough. They said if he did play, there was about a 10 to 15 percent chance of ending his career. Michael was such a competitor. He just wanted to play. I thought he was entitled to hear what the doctors had to say. I never thought he’d risk his entire career. It just didn’t make any sense to me.”
“But Michael figured that the 10 to 15 percent risk meant the odds were 85 to 90 percent that he wouldn’t get hurt. To me, it didn’t fit any risk/reward ratio. Here the reward was to come back and play on a team that had already had a bad year. Why risk your whole career for that reward? Michael insisted that he knew his own body better than I did. So we reached a compromise, that he would play gradually, just seven minutes a half at first.”: From Michael Jordan: The Life by Roland Lazenby
It is hard not to side with the Bulls’ upper management, especially given the severity of the injury itself. However, Michael Jordan had a fierce, competitive spirit in him that did not let him rest on the bench while his team struggled. The world would come to know this side of MJ later but Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf got a taste of Mike’s desire to win when he got injured in his second year.
If the constant questions and speculations from the media weren’t enough, the fact that Jordan refused to listen to three different doctors ended up creating quite a circus for the team.
There was no stopping a young Michael Jordan, even in injury
Even after the doctor’s report, there wasn’t anyone around who could’ve stopped Michael Jordan from scratching his basketball itch. Jordan went back to the University of North Carolina in 1985, where he started playing pickup games, which really put the scare in Jerry Krause at the time. Though MJ denied all statements to the Bulls front office, Nike’s executive at the time, Sonny Vacarro recalled, “I knew he was playing down there because he told me.”
Things got so out of hand for the Chicago Bulls at the time of Michael Jordan’s injury that MJ and the management had somewhat of a tiff. What was just actual concern from management regarding his career, ended up being perceived by Jordan being their property, just an athlete who was responsible for their millions.
But eventually, things worked out for both Mike and the Bulls as the history books have it and the world got one of the best basketball dynasties in NBA history.
