Michael Jordan and his affinity for the golf course is well documented. The 6x NBA champion began taking to the green when he was still a collegiate athlete at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He’s been doing so ever since and has gotten good enough to place egregious amounts of money on himself. However, along the way, he got caught up in quite the controversy regarding his feelings towards a certain community.
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Sam Smith is the author of one of the most explorative deep-dives in NBA history when it comes to a book dedicated solely to a single team and their season. Smith covered the Chicago Bulls’ first championship season (1990-91) in his book ‘Jordan Rules’ and exposed quite a lot about MJ and the way he handled being a team leader.
In doing so, he let out a tidbit about how Jordan and the Bulls were bantering back and forth regarding what they would do if they won the $60 million Chicago lottery.
Michael Jordan was accused to being an anti-semite
In the ‘Jordan Rules’, Sam Smith wrote that Michael Jordan said if he were to win the lottery worth $60 million, he would build his own golf course with a sign out front labelled, ‘No Jews Allowed’. When MJ caught wind of this, he denied the allegations, saying:
“Why would I have to win the lottery to buy a golf course? I do make a little bit of money.”
During an interview with Playboy in 1992, Michael would double down on his defense and say that he had never even applied to become a member of the golf club that he plays at that is predominantly occupied by people of Jewish heritage.
“Sam Smith wrote in his book that I would have been declined membership at a Jewish golf course, but that’s not true. I never applied. The only golf courses that I applied to, I got accepted,” said Jordan.
Michael Jordan once bet $300,000 on himself on a single hole
Charles Barkley vowed to stay away from any sort of bets Michael Jordan made on the golf course simply because of how much MJ put on the line. Chuck revealed once that Jordan put up $300,000 on a single putt as if it were chump change.
For a man being endorsed by McDonald’s, Gatorade, and having the Nike deal that he did, it’s safe to say that he had an excess of money. The fact that he so casually feels as though he could buy a whole golf course is a clear indication that $300,000 isn’t all too much for him in the long run.
