 
Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963 in Brooklyn, New York),  is an American former NBA player, and is considered the greatest  basketball player of all time.
Physical Statistics
* Height: 6 feet 6 inches (198 cm)
* Vertical leap: 42 inches (106 cm)
* Weight: 216 lb (98 kg)
 Michael Jeffrey Jordan was born in Brooklyn, New York, to James and  Delores Jordan. The family moved to Wilmington, North Carolina when he  was still a young child. Jordan has two older brothers, one older  sister, and one younger sister. As a teenager he was the only one of his  siblings who did not maintain a steady job and could have been viewed  as the least likely to succeed. Michael was not very focused  academically until he reached high school. Various suspensions, and  trouble in general during his freshman year of high school allowed him  to mature. He attended Emsley A. Laney High School, where he evolved  into a B+ student and a three-sport star in football (at quarterback),  baseball, and basketball. He was cut from his varsity basketball team  during his sophomore year because at 5’11″ he was deemed to be  underdeveloped, but over the summer he grew four inches and practiced  even harder. Over his next two varsity years, he would average 25 points  per game. He began focusing more on basketball, practicing every  morning before school with his high school varsity coach. He was  selected to the McDonald’s All-American Team as a senior. 
Jordan earned a basketball scholarship to the University of North  Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he majored in geography. As a freshman,  Jordan was an exciting, but not dominant, player. Nonetheless, he made  the game winning shot in the 1982 NCAA Basketball Championship game  against Georgetown, which was led by future NBA rival Patrick Ewing.  After winning the Naismith College Player of the Year award in 1984, he  left school early to enter the NBA Draft, and was selected by the  Chicago Bulls in the first round as the 3rd pick overall, after Houston  Rockets center Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Bowie of the Portland Trail  Blazers. Although Olajuwon developed into a Hall of Fame caliber player  and won two NBA Championships, the selection of Bowie over Jordan is  generally considered to be the worst draft blunder of all time.
Early NBA Career
After scoring 16 points in his first NBA game, Jordan took the league by  storm in his rookie year, scoring 40 or more points seven times en  route to a 28.2 points-per-game season. He also averaged 6.5 rebounds,  5.9 assists, and 2.4 steals per game. He revived interest in a  floundering Bulls franchise, received a spot on the All-Star team, and  won the Rookie of the Year award.
In the third game of the 1985-1986 NBA season, Jordan broke a bone in  his foot and missed all but 18 games. Upon his return, as advised by  team doctors Jordan was restricted to a limited number of minutes per  game by Coach Stan Albeck and General Manager Jerry Krause. Jordan  disagreed with this decision and this soured his relationship with  Krause for the rest of his career, as he felt that Krause was  intentionally trying to lose games in order to gain a better pick in the  NBA draft. In spite of Jordan’s injury, the Bulls still managed to make  the playoffs, where they were defeated in three games by the eventual  champion Boston Celtics. The series is best remembered for Jordan’s 63  points in Game 2, an NBA playoff single game scoring record that still  stands. After the game, Larry Bird observed that it was “God disguised  as Michael Jordan”.
The following season established Jordan as one of the best players in  the league. Jordan scored 50 or more points eight times during the  regular season, won his first scoring title with a 37.1 points-per-game  average, and became the only player besides Wilt Chamberlain to score  3,000 points in a season. He finished runner-up to Magic Johnson in MVP  voting. The playoffs ended for the Bulls as they did the year before, in  a three-game sweep by the Celtics.
Jordan dunking in a slam dunk contest.
In his fourth season, Jordan averaged 35 PPG, 5.5 RPG, and 5.9 APG,  won his first MVP award and the Defensive Player of the Year award  (garnering 259 steals and 131 blocks, unusually high for a guard), was  named MVP of the All-Star Game, and won his second consecutive Slam Dunk  Contest with a dunk from the free throw line. Jordan’s Bulls got out of  the first round for the first time, beating the Cleveland Cavaliers in  five games (with Jordan averaging 45.2 points per game during the  series) before losing in five games to the eventual Eastern Conference  champion Detroit Pistons.
In 1988-89, Jordan averaged 32.5 points, 8 rebounds, and 8 assists  per game while finishing second in the MVP voting. He established  himself as one of the NBA’s great clutch performers with a last-second  dagger over Craig Ehlo in Game 5 in the first round of the playoffs. The  Bulls, fueled by the emergence of Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant as  starters, defeated the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference  semi-finals before losing to the Pistons in the Conference Finals.
The Pistons, with their punishing, physical play, established a plan  for playing against Jordan, dubbed “The Jordan Rules”: double- and  triple-teaming him every time he touched the ball, preventing him from  going to the baseline, hammering him when he drove to the basket, and  forcing him to rely on his inexperienced teammates.
Coach Phil Jackson took over the team in the 1989-90 season, in which  Jordan averaged 33.6 points, 6.9 rebounds, 6.3 assists, and finishing  third place in the MVP voting. The Bulls lost to the Pistons in seven  games in the Conference Finals.
 In the 1990-91 season, Michael Jordan, motivated by the team’s narrow  defeat against the Pistons a year earlier, finally bought into Jackson  and assistant coach Tex Winter’s triangle offense after years of  resistance. That year, he won his second MVP award after averaging 31.5  points, 6.0 rebounds, and 5.5 assists per game for the regular season,  and the Bulls finished in first place for the first time in 16 years.  With Scottie Pippen developing into an All-Star, the Bulls proved too  strong for their Eastern Conference competition. The Bulls defeated the  New York Knicks, the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Detroit Pistons en  route to defeating Magic Johnson and the Los Angeles Lakers who were  without both #2 scorer and future Hall of Fame inductee James Worthy,  and #3 scorer Byron Scott in the NBA Finals. In what would be an  enduring video clip, Jordan changed hands midair while completing a  layup. Jordan won his first NBA Finals MVP award unanimously, and  famously wept while holding his first NBA Finals trophy.
Jordan and the Bulls continued their dominance in the 1991-1992  season, finishing with a 67-15 record. Jordan won his second consecutive  MVP award with a 30.1/6.4/6.1 season. After winning a physical 7-game  series over the burgeoning New York Knicks in the second round and  finishing off the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Conference Finals in 6  games, the Bulls faced off against Clyde Drexler and the Portland Trail  Blazers in the Finals. The media, hoping to recreate a Magic-Bird type  rivalry in a Jordan-Drexler/”Air” Jordan vs. Clyde “The Glide” rivalry,  compared the two throughout the pre-Finals hype. Perhaps motivated by  what he felt was a comparison to an inferior player, Jordan responded by  draining six 3-pointers and scoring 35 points in the first half of Game  1. The Bulls would go on to win the game, and then wrapped up the  series in six games. Because of his dominating performance, Jordan was  named Finals MVP for the second year in a row.
In 1992-93, despite a 32.6/6.7/5.5 campaign, Jordan’s streak of  consecutive MVP seasons ended as he lost the award to his friend Charles  Barkley. Fittingly, though, Jordan and the Bulls would end up meeting  Barkley and his Phoenix Suns in the 1993 NBA Finals, in a match-up  dubbed as “Altitude vs. Attitude”. Michael’s perceived slighting in the  MVP balloting only fueled his competitive fire. The Bulls would capture  their third consecutive NBA championship on a game-winning shot by John  Paxson and a last-second block by Horace Grant, but Jordan was once  again Chicago’s catalyst. He averaged a Finals-record 41.0 PPG during  the six-game series, and in the process became the first player in NBA  history to win three straight Finals MVPs. With the Finals triumph,  Jordan capped off what may have been the most spectacular seven-year run  by an athlete ever, but there were signs that Jordan was tiring of his  massive celebrity and all of the non-basketball hassles in his life.
First Retirement
In October 1993, Jordan announced his retirement, citing a lost desire  to play the game. Many speculate that the murder of his father, James  Jordan, in July 1993 factored into his decision. However, those close to  Jordan claim that he was strongly considering retirement as early as  the summer of 1992, and that the added exhaustion of the Dream Team run  only solidified Michael’s burned-out feelings regarding the game and his  ever-growing celebrity. In any case, Jordan’s announcement sent  shockwaves throughout the NBA and appeared on the front pages of  newspapers around the world. Not since Jim Brown’s sudden retirement  from the NFL in 1966 had such a dominant athlete walked away from the  game at the peak of his abilities.
Baseball Career
After retiring from basketball, Jordan spent the next year pursuing a  childhood dream: professional baseball. He signed a minor league  contract with the Chicago White Sox of the American League (AL),  reported to spring training, and was assigned to the team’s minor league  system. He had an unspectacular professional baseball career for the  Birmingham Barons, a Chicago White Sox farm team, batting .202 with 3  HR, 51 RBI, 30 SB (tied for fifth in Southern League), 11 errors and 6  outfield assists. He led the club with 11 bases-loaded RBI and 25 RBI  with runners in scoring position and two outs.
Personal Life
Jordan is the fourth of five children. He has two older brothers,  Larry and James, one older sister, Delores, and a younger sister,  Roslyn. He married Juanita Jordan in September 1989, and they have two  sons, Jeffrey and Marcus, and a daughter, Jasmine. Michael and Juanita  filed for divorce on January 4, 2002, citing irreconcilable differences,  but reconciled shortly thereafter. 
Jordan’s son Jeffrey, is a mid-level high school recruit who will graduate in 2007.
Jordan’s father, James, was murdered on July 23, 1993, at a highway  rest area in Lumberton, North Carolina, by Daniel Green and Larry Martin  Demery, who were caught after being traced from calls the pair made on  James Jordan’s cellular phone. Both assailants were convicted and  sentenced to life in prison.
Jordan’s brother James R. Jordan is the Command Sergeant Major of the  35th Signal Brigade of the XVIII Airborne Corps in the U.S. Army. James  gained certain celebrity when he announced, at the age of forty-seven,  that he intended to stay in the Army to deploy with his unit to Iraq in  support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Jordan is a member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity and has the omega letter (Ω) tattooed on his chest.
Jordan is a notorious cigar smoker, often seen with a cigar in the locker room during championship celebrations.
Beginning in 1991, Jordan appeared in ProStars, an NBC Saturday  morning cartoon. The show featured Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Bo Jackson  fighting crime and helping children.
Jordan has also been connected with the Looney Tunes cartoon  characters. A Nike commercial in the 1993 Super Bowl where he and Bugs  Bunny played basketball against some Martians inspired the 1996 live  action/animated movie Space Jam, which starred Michael and Bugs in a  fictional story set during his first retirement. They have subsequently  appeared together in several commercials for MCI.
After his second retirement, Jordan formed the MVP.com sports apparel  enterprise with fellow sports greats Wayne Gretzky and John Elway in  1999. It fell victim to the dot-com bust, and the rights to the domain  were sold to CBS SportsLine in 2001.
For many years, Jordan has been the real-life mascot for Nestlé Crunch, appearing on the products and in their advertising.
Awards
* NBA Most Valuable Player Award: 1987-88, 1990-91, 1991-92, 1995-96, 1997-98
* NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award: 1990-91, 1991-92, 1992-93, 1995-96, 1996-97, 1997-98
* NBA All-Star MVP Award: 1988, 1996, 1998
* NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award: 1987-88
* NBA Rookie of the Year Award: 1984-85
* Naismith College Player of the Year: 1984
* John R. Wooden Award: 1984
* Adolph Rupp Trophy: 1984
* ACC Men’s Basketball Player of the Year: 1983-84
* Two NBA All-Star Dunk Contest Championships: 1987, 1988