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Mortgaging Michael Jordan’s Reputation
- University Press of Mississippi
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122 MortgagIng MIchael Jordan’s rePutatIon —JeFFRey lane I don’t want to be the greatest minority golfer ever; I want to be the greatest golfer ever. I want to be the Michael Jordan of golf. —tigeR WooDs A lion on the court, he was a lamb when his community needed him. —William RhoDen on miChael JoRDan intRoDuCtion Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu understands the consecration of artists as the “magical division” created to distinguish the “sacred” from the “profane.”1 The legitimacy of this magic, however, depends on popular, professional, and critical recognition.2 Michael Jordan’s consecration in basketball culture undoubtedly can be legitimatized popularly (e.g., his team sold out every home game from November 17, 1987, through April 14, 2003), professionally (five MVP awards, six Finals MVPs, and so forth), and critically (the most appearances on the cover of Sports Illustrated, ESPN’s greatest North American athlete of the twentieth century, among others). But more interestingly , professional basketball is understood through the consecrated figure of Michael Jordan. In a random sample of blog posts and reader comments on the popular basketball blog hoopsaddict.com from January 2006 through April 2008,54 percent of the 120 references to Jordan are analogical.3 In other words, Jordan is mentioned as a way of conceptualizing another player (e.g., “the next Jordan,”“heir to the Jordan throne”),or a Jordan moment is invoked to understand a second moment in NBA history. Jordan’s legacy has become a cognitive map of recent basketball culture, with events organized around the Jordan dynasty, the post-Jordan era, the Jordanless Eastern Conference, the NBA pre-Michael, MJ’s Chicago Bulls, and so on. When Kobe Bryant struggled in a title-deciding Game 6 blowout loss to the Boston Celtics in the 2008 NBA Finals, Boston fans chanted, “You’re . . . not . . . Jordan!” Bryant’s inability to lead the Los Angeles Lakers to the championship was, according Mortgaging Michael Jordan’s Reputation 123 to sportswriters, further confirmation that“Bryant is no Jordan”4 and“a valuable lesson” for“all the people who have been busy comparing” the two.5 Consequently, I experienced some dissonance when I was asked to write on Jordan as an illustration of the black athlete whose reputation has declined over time. This is not to say that Jordan has never received negative publicity, either as a player or since retiring: heavy gambling, allegations of adultery (Jordan and his wife divorced in December 2006), perceived maltreatment of teammates and team management, and knocks against Jordan’s ability as a team executive—but never as a businessman—have all been part of the Jordan dialogue.6 But as Henry Louis Gates Jr. points out, “An indiscretion is truly damaging only if it’s discordant with your perceived character.”7 So Jordan’s gambling, infidelity, bullying, and overaggressiveness become affirmations of his alpha male status and extensions of the same fiercely competitive nature that made him a superstar on the court. An often-repeated quote by Jordan’s father, James Jordan, exemplifies this sort of streamlining: “My son doesn’t have a gambling problem. He has a competition problem.”8 So while some postretirement drop-off is inevitable for any celebrated athlete, let alone a player once asked (seriously) by a journalist how it feels to be a god,Jordan,who exited the game for the third and final time in 2003,remains a beloved figure—only 6 percent of the Jordan references in the blog sample were critical—and a commercial powerhouse.9 Two out of every three pairs of basketball sneakers purchased in the United States are made by Jordan Brand, a Nike subsidiary run by Jordan since 1997.10 However, since the 1990s, a school of criticism has begun a deeper critique of Jordan’s legacy, moving beyond surface-level gripes and gossip-style reproach to consider Jordan’s cultural, social, and economic meaning. These criticisms diverge from popular conceptions and instead construct Jordan’s reputation and race from a particular sociopolitical vantage point. This work usually comes from one of two places: scholarly writing (critical race theory, sociology of sport, cultural studies, or the like) or a niche of sportswriting that treats sport as reflective of and influencing society rather than a diversion from it.In this genre of criticism,Jordan is constructed as a neoimperialist11 or, going the other way, a prosaic blank billboard for corporations to fill,12 a shirker of moral responsibility and indifferent to political and social causes...