Conspiracy theory time…
I’m sure many of you that were around at the time know the conspiracy theory that Michael Jordan was secretly suspended from the NBA. This was after the 1993 season. He would then attempt to play baseball, and joined the Chicago White Sox minor leagues, playing in Birmingham.
Recently on ESPN’s Buster Olney’s Baseball Tonight podcast, Sandy Alderson who was the GM of the Oakland Athletics from 1983-1997.
During the interview, Alderson mentioned that they made a strong offer to Jordan to join their big league team and would be on their 25-man roster.
If you recall when Jordan stopped playing basketball and decided to try baseball and ultimately went down the Birmingham Barons, the Chicago White Sox affiliate. When I heard that was happening, or about to happen, I called the agent right away and said, ‘Hey look, I understand he may be going to Double-A. I don’t even know who the 25th man is on our major league team right now. I will sign him and put him on the major league roster. He’ll be part of our 25-man team. Tomorrow.”
This is interesting. Perhaps this option was never presented to Jordan, and maybe Jordan had already talked to Jerry Reinsdorf and his agent knew there was an understanding that he was honoring a commitment to Jerry and the White Sox…? But, why wouldn’t he want to make that jump to the majors?
Outside the commitment to Jerry (which I am speculating on), perhaps Jordan didn’t want to look bad on a major league level? Perhaps he wanted to tighten up his skills, do the work at the minor league level, before possibly making it to the bigs? For a guy as confident as he is, I can also see him not wanting to be a side-show for an organization while he was truly attempting to fulfill a lifelong dream.
But this could fuel the conspiracy, couldn’t it?
Alright all, it’s time to pull your tinfoil hats out. We’re going down the rabbit hole.
When Jordan retired, a big factor in him walking away was the thought that his father, James Jordan, would have seen his last game. During the offseason after the Chicago Bulls first three-peat, James was murdered in North Carolina. Some, and I don’t fall into this group, believe that James was killed due to some of Michael’s gambling issues.
See, Jordan was known for his off-the-court gambling. Whether he was traveling to Las Vegas, maybe playing golf, or hell – even ping pong. Some suggest that Jordan got into debt with the wrong types and those types may have had something to do with James’ death. There are also those that suggest that some of that gambling had found its way into basketball, which was uncovered by David Stern, and he was then secretly suspended because of this.
If you follow the gambling suspension path, it would make sense that Jordan would play for the Reinsdorf owned White Sox organization. This was a way for Jordan to be under the “Bulls umbrella” even though he was playing a different sport entirely. Now, the revelation that Jordan was offered a major league contract with the A’s could open up some additional scrutiny over why he left basketball in the first place.
Realistic reasoning (as mentioned above) notwithstanding, if your dream was to play baseball in the major leagues, wouldn’t you jump at the opportunity to do so? I mean, if a GM came to me today with an MLB contract, I would accept without thinking about it. But, Jordan elected to go ride buses in Birmingham!?
Possibly this was because he was suspended. Perhaps this was because Reinsdorf and the organization needed to watch Jordan, ensure he wasn’t spending time with all the wrong people.
All the wrong people? Why are you tarnishing MJ’s name?
I cherish MJ, the dude is the GOAT and as mentioned in this article, he has helped me shape the life that I have today. But there was a real issue with Jordan and gambling and the NBA was investigating him before his first retirement.
Enter James “Slim” Bouler. After winning their second championship and winning the ’92 Olympics, Jordan was called to testify in a criminal case. Bouler, who was a convicted drug dealer, was found with $153,000 in a bag in the Charlotte airport. There was also a check for $57,000 with Jordan’s signature on it.
Jordan would spend nine-minutes on the stand testifying in Bouler’s criminal case, where Jordan admitted that the check was from a weekend-long gambling spree on a Hilton Head Island golf trip.
Jordan was also found to have owed $1,252,000 to a San Diego businessman, Richard Equinas. Equinas would write a book, Michael and Me: Our Gambling Addiction…My Cry for Help which he spells out his gambling addiction with Jordan. In the book, he talks about how, during more than 100 rounds of golf, Jordan and Equinas would bet thousands per round and would often run balances of more than a million.
Jordan lost $1.252 million to him during a Sept. 20, 1991 match at Aviara Golf Course in San Diego County–the same week in which the Chicago Bulls’ guard was formally named a member of the 1992 U.S. Olympic basketball team. The following June, Esquinas said he and Jordan met for a final three-day golf betting binge at several San Diego County courses. That binge, Esquinas said, resulted in Jordan reducing the gambling debt to $902,000.
LA Times
Jordan and betting had become a widely known secret. If you followed Jordan, even casually, you heard the tales of him on the golf course where hundreds of thousands could change hands. You heard about him losing $5 million in one roll of the craps dice. While he was hands down the best player in the NBA, it appeared his talents didn’t always translate to his gambling habits. His losses seemed to outweigh his wins, and those two cases show as much.
But he didn’t just gamble on the course…
Around the same time, Esquinas’ book was released, Jordan and the Bulls were in the Eastern Conference Finals, playing the New York Knicks. Before game two, Jordan was spotted in Atlantic City in the early morning hours gambling at the tables. 18-hours later, the Bulls would lose to the Knicks 96-91. During the game, Jordan was held to just 11 points in the second half and didn’t score in the games final 2:46 as the Knicks held on to win. Two longtime Knicks fans, who had courtside seats, heckled Jordan throughout the game about his gambling and suggested they were with him in Atlantic City.
After the Bulls won their third championship, the NBA began to investigate Michael Jordan’s gambling habits to ensure he didn’t do anything that could have hurt the league. Just four months after this investigation began, Jordan would retire from the game of basketball. During his retirement speech, Jordan would say, “Five years down the road, if the urge comes back, if the Bulls will have me, if David Stern lets me back in the league, I may come back.”
Now, Jordan would claim that with nothing else to prove, the desire just wasn’t there anymore. This is weird, especially since we all knew the sole driver of Jordan was always his desire. But, the strangest part of that press conference was when he stated, “if David Stern lets me back in the league.”
Why would he say that!? Why wouldn’t Stern want Jordan back in the league!? This was the biggest thing to happen to the NBA since, well… never. Under Jordan’s watch, the game’s popularity soared. The league’s revenue increased significantly during Jordan’s watch. Why wouldn’t Stern want him in the league?
Unless there was something to his gambling, and the league, and a secret suspension.
Re-enter Bouler.
Bouler has been out of prison since 2000 and lives in Charlotte, where Jordan also lives. Just miles apart, Bouler claims that he has not heard from Jordan since he went away to prison, and by all accounts, they were pretty good friends before that time. In fact, it sounds as if Bouler has a lot on Jordan that he wouldn’t want to get out in the open. It also seems as if the feds were sniffing the Jordan gambling trail along with the NBA.
“You’re a billionaire,” Bouler says about Jordan. “I mean, you’re a billionaire and me and you are all right. They (federal investigators) come to me to try to knock you out, I mean, you ain’t got no career if I cooperate with the government. I don’t cooperate. They take everything I got. They take my life for eight years. I can’t go back and get that. When I come home, what you gonna do for me? What would you do for me? You’re a billionaire. What would you do for me?”
Now, taking the word from a convicted felon isn’t always the best way to go about your life. It certainly isn’t how you convict someone else of wrongdoing. Bouler has a lot of stories, stories of winning a Trump Invitational, and spending time in Donald’s penthouse. Stories of being thrown out of Vegas. Lots and lots of stories, but little details. Little specifics. Lots of hearsay. Lots of stories that cannot really be proven. But of all the stories he may have, he is stuck on the belief that Jordan owes him something.
“If the shoe was on the other foot—you saved my life, my career?” asks Bouler, positing what would happen if the tables were turned and he was the wealthy one and Jordan was an everyday person. “Whatever you want, you got it. I’m a billionaire.
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“Put (some money) on the front porch in a bag. Hey, everybody can’t watch you all the time. Put it on the front porch in a bag, I’ll know where it comes from. I wake up in the morning, there it is on the front porch. Hello.”
Does he know something? Did he really keep a secret from the feds that would have buried Michael Jordan? Perhaps. It isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Jordan was a gambler, and going from $200 a hole to upwards of $1 million is an aggressive and dangerous path. Who’s to say that gambling on the course didn’t enter other areas of Jordan’s life? Remember that story that came out just this past winter on Jordan with Jeremy Roenick?
“‘Meet me at Sunset Ridge, early. We’re gonna go play 18 holes,’” Roenick recalled Jordan saying. “We played a round, I beat him for a couple thousand and got ready to leave … Now, the Bulls are playing that night. They played Cleveland that night. I’m thinking he’s leaving, it’s 10 o’clock. He goes, ‘No, let’s go play again.’
“So we go and fill up a bag full of ice and Coors Light and walk again. We roll around another 18 and I take him for another couple [thousand dollars]. Now we’ve been drinking all afternoon and he’s going from Sunset Ridge to the stadium, to play a game. I’m messing around. I’m like, “I’m gonna call my bookie. All the money you just lost to me, I’m putting on Cleveland.’
“He goes, ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll bet you that we’ll win by 20 points and I have more than 40 [points].’ I’m like, ‘Done.’ Son of a gun goes out and scores 52 and they win by 26 points or something.”
What if one little part of that story is changed? What if Jordan says, “I’ll tell you what. Double or nothing, we (the Bulls) win by 20 points and I have more than 40 points.?” If this wasn’t the conversation, why would Roenick say, “Done.”
Changing that one line changes the severity of Jordan’s gambling. Now, this is all hearsay, but there is a lot of evidence out there that proves Jordan gambled. Hell, I don’t think he denies how much he gambled. But everything changes if he gambled on a basketball game. The moment he does that is the moment the greatest basketball player of all-time becomes Pete Rose.
When athletes or coaches or general managers or owners start betting on the game itself, the entire integrity disappears. Could this be what David Stern was looking into? Could this be what Bouler referenced? Could this be why he “retired” after the 1993 season?
The evidence is there.
*Fyi… I enjoy conspiracy theories. They are fun to follow and I have been down my share of rabbit holes on YouTube. I don’t believe many of them, I don’t believe this one. I thought this would be an interesting experiment with “The Last Dance” being released on ESPN and the latest news from Sandy Alderson.
