Author’s note: this article was a chapter in a book that my friend Adam and I never finished writing, but that we loved. The premise – “What if…” in the world of sports, taking events or decisions and applying them to the Back to the Future / Space-Time Continuum test. How would history be different? Here’s one of our favorite chapters, predicting that if Michael Jordan, the greatest player of all time, had been rightfully drafted first by Houston (and not third by Chicago), Barack Obama would not be president. Sidenote – we love the idea of footnotes, so please be warned that there are footnotes at the bottom of the post. Here goes:
What if…the Houston Rockets had drafted Michael Jordan with the first pick in the 1984 NBA Draft?
The 1984 NBA Draft may well be the most-discussed “what if” draft in sports history. Famously, the Portland Trailblazers took injury-prone, seven-foot center Sam Bowie with the second pick, enabling the Chicago Bulls to take Michael Jordan third. That selection would pay off in a big way for the Bulls, leading to six NBA championships, nine trips to the conference finals, and an unparalleled legacy as one of the greatest dynasties in sports. Bowie, on the other hand, would suffer through an injury-plagued career and become most famous as a punchline, the guy who was drafted ahead of Jordan.
The Houston Rockets selected first in that draft, taking center Hakeem Olajuwon, and have never received much criticism for that choice. Olajuwon was a can’t-miss prospect, and certainly didn’t. In his second season, the Rockets made the NBA Finals (losing to the Boston Celtics), and by the end of his career he had led Houston to two championships[1]. In hindsight, Houston made a perfectly defensible choice with Olajuwon, but given Jordan’s career it’s hard to say that the Rockets shouldn’t have drafted MJ. What would have happened if Houston had paired Ralph Sampson with Jordan? If Portland had paired Clyde Drexler with Hakeem Olajuwon? On the court, Portland would have been an absolute juggernaut, and with the Showtime Lakers, the David Robinson-led Spurs, and other Western contenders along the way, the deck would have been stacked a bit more against Jordan. Off the court, one could argue, more importantly, that if Houston had picked Jordan, Barack Obama would not be United States President.
How are the two events linked? Consider Jordan’s legacy as an African-American icon and pillar of American business, in the state of Illinois, spanning the childhood of the generation that would elect Obama to the U.S. Senate from Illinois. That Jordan and Obama rose to prominence in the same state was helpful; that Jordan walked in to such a tailor-made situation to launch him to unparalleled success and influence in American pop culture was pivotal.
First, let’s look at Michael Jordan’s influence in setting the stage for a black president…in a nation less than 150 years removed from slavery; less than a generation removed from school segregation and the assassinations of nearly every prominent figure in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. In a nation where Obama was only the third black (post-Reconstruction[2]) Senator in an organization that maintains 100 members. Jordan is credited, along with Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, with rescuing the NBA from its image problems in the early 1980s. This was a tall order, as the image problems were mainly that the NBA was “too urban” for white America, which was fearful of drugs and gang culture. To be truthful, the NBA did have a fairly prominent cocaine problem at the time, but it’s also fair to note that America wasn’t quite ready for a thoroughly-black league only a generation after Jackie Robinson. Jordan’s winning smile, relatable demeanor, and gentle touch transitioned the NBA from a perception of overpaid, overmedicated “thugs[3]” to a family-friendly, aspirational activity, with parents singing along with their children that they wanted to “Be Like Mike[4]”.
Jordan’s elevation of the NBA was no small feat, but it’s even more noteworthy that he had songs like “Be Like Mike” to sing from his myriad endorsement contracts. What he accomplished on the court was remarkable; the impact he had on the world off the court set the stage for a president like Barack Obama. Jordan became the man every child wanted to be, and the man every parent would be proud to have as a son. He had all the makings of a true American hero – he so idolized his father that he adopted (and made famous) his father’s nervous habit of sticking his tongue out as he worked. He loved his mother, and so shared her passion for education that he wore his collegiate North Carolina shorts under his Bulls uniform (an homage to the school and his coach, Dean Smith – proof that Jordan respected and admired authority and those who could teach him). He exemplified hard work and perseverance, having been cut from his high school varsity team before becoming a prep star.
And he was black, but in an America in which adjectives tend to precede the people they describe, Jordan wasn’t a “black superstar” but rather a superstar who happened to be black. Parents had little choice but to (and little incentive not to) embrace him as their children’s hero, and kids saw him as Superman with little regard for the color of his skin. By the late 1980s, less than a full generation removed from the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X – and in the same timeframe as states fought to decline King’s holiday and keep their Confederate flags – a black man was America’s most prominent icon, export, and matinee idol.
By 2008, the generation that grew up idolizing Jordan would be Barack Obama’s support base, forming a volunteer army that transformed the world of politics and voting in record numbers for their age demographic. Their parents, the Baby Boomers, would represent the nation’s largest demographic group, and between the two groups would form a large majority of the voting-age public. Having all come of age with a black hero on their walls, t-shirts, and televisions, they would represent the first voting public in American history with even a remote inkling that a black man could lead them.
To become president, however, one needs much more than the qualifications and demeanor to ensure the people that he can lead. Well before that point, one needs the financial support of corporate and upper-class America to be able to afford the media necessary to reach out to the people. The major political parties would certainly like to have a candidate who is capable, but they are much more concerned in having a candidate who is electable. Politics is at least as much about winning as it is about governing, if only because you can’t do the latter if you haven’t done the former. With – again, it bears repeating – only four black senators in modern history, how could corporate America in good faith put its backing behind a black candidate with a true chance to win the presidency?
Enter Michael Jordan, who between the years of 1984 and 2008 had proven, time and time again, to big business that investments in a black spokesperson-slash-icon can pay huge dividends. Few blacks had risen to much national notoriety in anything other than “black” capacities, and the vast majority of corporate pitchmen were white. But there was Jordan, cool, calm, and collected, the antithesis of “blacksploitation”, playing the leading man in ads for Nike, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s Hanes, Gatorade, General Motors, and other top companies; there was Jordan starring alongside Bugs Bunny in a family-themed feature film, Space Jam; there was Jordan, speaking at events for management consultants, investment bankers, salesmen, and advertisers alike, relishing his role as businessman off the court nearly as much as he thrived on winning on the court.
Fortune Magazine estimated upon Jordan’s (second) retirement from the NBA in 1998 that his impact on the global economy to that point had been $10 billion. The Journal of Advertising Research found that Jordan’s return to basketball in 1995, after his first retirement, increased the market capitalization of his then-endorsement firms by $1 billion. Jay-Z may get credit for the lyric, but it can easily be said that Jordan wasn’t a businessman, he was a business, man. Or, more appropriately, an economy unto himself, and a business force that hadn’t been seen before. Corporate America thrived upon the likability of a tall, handsome, well-spoken[5] black man, and the stage was set for similar figures – like Barack Obama – to achieve similar corporately-funded heights.
So, as argued above, Jordan’s popularity among the masses and profitability for Corporate America set the stage for Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency. Why couldn’t this have happened had Jordan played in Houston? Even aside from the coincidence that Jordan and Obama both called Illinois home – a contributing factor to this argument – Jordan’s presence in Chicago was crucial both on and off the court.
On the court? Had Jordan been drafted initially by Houston, the Portland Trailblazers drafting next would certainly have chosen Hakeem Olajuwon, giving Portland a nucleus of Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, Jerome Kersey, Mychal Thompson, and then the addition of Terry Porter the next year (Portland drafted him with the final pick of the first round in 1985, so for the sake of argument one can assume they’d have had a chance to draft him regardless of the draft order that year). Considering that, in reality, Portland became a legitimate force in the West with essentially nothing to show for that year’s pick, the hypothetical addition of all-time great Olajuwon makes Portland a dominant team in the Western Conference, along with the Magic Johnson-led Los Angeles Lakers, over the next 5-6 years at least.
Had Jordan been drafted first, he’d have been paired with Ralph Sampson, who at the time was a top-tier player, but by the late 1980s would be a non-factor given his knee injuries. With Sampson, Jordan may have achieved some early playoff success in 1985-88, but it’s unlikely that those Rockets could have endured the Lakers, the hypothetical Blazers, and the rest of the Western Conference, and even if they had the Boston Celtics of that era were a juggernaut of their own. It’s safe to say that Jordan’s career wouldn’t have had the Hollywood-scripted arc that he achieved in Chicago – rise to stardom as a one-man show from 1984-1987, three epic duels with the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons from 1988-1990 as Jordan learned to win and built a foundation around him, a thorough drubbing of those villainous Pistons in 1991 and a championship over Magic Johnson in 1991, dominance of another prominent villain, the New York Knicks, and more titles in 1992-93, and then a return to basketball and three more championships from 1996-98. Likely, if drafted by Houston, Jordan has a little more success – but not championships – in his first few years, then is forced to rebuild with the injuries to Sampson in the late 1980s, just when his real-life Bulls were achieving prominence, and while the hypothetical Blazers (and Lakers) were hitting their peaks. Without the ready-made villain Pistons, the ascendant character arc of the late 1980s culminating in the 1991 championship finals with the country’s second- and third-largest media markets (LA and Chicago) and the sport’s other biggest star, Magic Johnson, would Jordan have reached the same lofty heights?
While possible, it’s doubtful, and even were Jordan able to do so on the court, off the court he’d have had the challenge – remember, we’re talking about his impact culturally and economically more so than athletically – of playing in Houston and not in Chicago. Not that there’s anything wrong with Houston[6], but Chicago is a quintessential American city along both dimensions that Jordan (and later Obama) rose to prominence – culturally, it’s one of the most-relatable cities to the rest of the nation, and economically it’s arguably the second-most important city in the U.S. (behind New York). If Corporate America were to choose a perfect pitchman to make an icon, Chicago would be a natural place to look, and Jordan almost immediately became the advertising industry’s greatest find.
In terms of business, Chicago has few peers on the global scale. It’s one of the world’s most prominent financial centers and home to much of the advertising industry and several of the world’s biggest advertisers, including McDonald’s. While only a handful of Illinois-based businesses could afford Jordan’s sponsorship fees, everyone who was anyone in Chicago had Bulls tickets during Jordan’s career, and that group included some of the wealthiest and most influential people in business. Jordan had a built-in audience of the who’s who of American business, and accordingly could convince the mass of Corporate America to invest in certain pillars of black America.
Equally, if not more, important to this argument is that Chicago is, for purposes of media, advertising, and politics, about as American as it gets. Home to many an American family sitcom or movie – Home Alone, Family Matters, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, the National Lampoon’s Vacation series and John Hughes’ catalogue, etc. – Chicago is uniquely relatable to most of Americans. A notable city with a famous skyline, Chicago is known for family values not attributed to New York or Los Angeles. As a center of travel – it was the mainstay of the railroad industry and its O’Hare Airport was, for most of Jordan’s career, the busiest in the world – and business, it’s a location with which many have ties, having either been there or knowing someone who has[7].
As symbolic as Chicago is to American culture, it’s even more uniquely relatable to political swing state culture. Heading into the 2008 election, the key battleground states – those in which the election was seen to be in doubt – included Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri (Obama’s only loss in this list), Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Virginia. Of those states, Obama lost – only by a small margin – Missouri, and those may be the states in which the Jordan Rules, so to speak, were in most in effect. Chicago is the de facto “Capital of the Midwest”, a cultural and economic hub for the cities between the Appalachians and Rockies and north of the Mason-Dixon line, and Jordan played in the NBA’s Central Division. People from Big Ten Conference states – Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa, Western Pennsylvania – simply identify with Chicago. Jordan played his division games against teams from Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Ohio, and up until 1989 Minnesotans didn’t have a team of their own. Furthermore, Jordan had a hand in Obama’s other big swing state wins, having grown up and played college basketball in North Carolina, and having played his final professional stint in Washington, DC, the most populous portion of Virginia. In nearly every major swing state for the 2008 election, Michael Jordan had made a personal presence over the 20 previous years, and Obama won all of them but Missouri, the state not represented by an NBA franchise. Coincidence?
Chicago afforded Jordan two other major-but-unsung advantages. As mentioned previously, Chicago was enough a capital of the Midwest to engender Bulls fans from across the region. The same has traditionally been true of the Cubs in baseball, and the reason has much less to do with Ernie Banks than it does to do with Harry Caray. As a media capital, Chicago’s radio stations have traditionally had larger reach than have those of other Midwestern cities, giving people across the region access to Chicago sports. By the late 1980s, that dynamic had given the nation access to Bulls home games via cable television “superstation” WGN – one of essentially two such local-turned-national superstations.[8] Simply by virtue of draft circumstance, Jordan ended up in one of a precious few markets that could allow the majority of his home games to be broadcast nationally, allowing for an even more-meteoric rise to iconic superstardom. What’s more, Jordan’s Chicago location set him in an ideal situation to reach the nation as far as timing; though Houston, his other hypothetical discussion in this chapter, is also in the Central time zone, Chicago had the advantage for Jordan (and Obama) of being in the NBA’s Eastern Conference, meaning that over 2/3 of Jordan’s games – mostly televised nationally – took place before the bedtimes of the entire country, right in the comfort of America’s homes.
Trite as it may sound, Jordan also fell into the perfect color scheme in Chicago with the Bulls’ red and black uniforms. As much as Jordan did for Nike – over $6 billion worth of impact to date – Nike also helped to create Jordan as an icon, and Nike’s greatest contribution in that regard was to make His Airness the ultimate 1980s/90s fashion statement. The Jumpman line started initially with a pair of stylish red, black, and white sneakers – in a color scheme that, incidentally, matched that of the decade’s slightly more famous MJ, Michael Jackson, whose red jacket, black pants, and white socks were prominent in the most famous music video of all time, for Thriller. Again, the color scheme could simply be coincidence, but in this search for a tipping point of monumental proportions – an African American garnering enough popular support to become President – a series of coincidences could have provided exactly the necessary momentum. Could Jordan have been as popular in red and yellow as he was in red and black? Perhaps, but as another Nike icon of that era, Andre Agassi, was famous for saying, “image is everything”, and Jordan’s image certainly wasn’t hurt by his choice in colors.
[1] Ironically, these two championships occurred in the only two seasons that Jordan did not play. Jordan missed the entire 1994 season and most of the 1995 season in a semi-retirement. Had Jordan played full seasons both years, it’s likely that the Bulls would have met Houston in at least one Finals, and also quite possible that Houston wouldn’t have won either title. In that event, would the selection of Olajuwon still seem as correct? Houston gets a pass mainly because of those championships, and also because Bowie was such a bust at #2, but on results Jordan was still a considerably better pick.
[2] Two African-Americans – both from Mississippi – served in the Senate after the Civil War but before Reconstruction, in an era as unique to politics as the 1994-95 non-Jordan years were to the NBA. Immediately after the Civil War, Southern governments were dissolved – after all, they were Confederate governments, rejoining the Union – and reconstituted. Mississippi’s population was a black majority, and so for a short blip on the historical radar, its legislature and US congressional representation were black, too. That trend was rather quickly reversed, and it took nearly 100 years for another black Senator to take office.
[3] It’s tough, thirty years later, to write about the sentiment toward the NBA and the black community as a whole without feeling discriminatory, hence the quotes on “thugs”. In a historical context, though, that was the prevailing attitude. We’ve come a long way.
[4] This was the jingle for Jordan’s Gatorade advertisements, and an incredible feature of one of the greatest stories ever told. After Jordan personally dominated one of the 1992 Dream Team scrimmages, cementing again his position as the greatest player in the world, he grabbed a Gatorade and started singing his own ad song: “Sometimes I dream…that he is me…”. How many people can sing a song that someone else wrote, and that millions loved, about how great they are?
[5] Chris Rock’s stand-up bit about white media calling black dignitaries, specifically Colin Powell, “well-spoken” is apropos here. “He speaks so well; he’s so well spoken…” Rock made the comments in jest (he followed it up by asking if we should be so impressed that a man can talk), but the impetus was the reality of the stereotype – mainstream America, even in the mid-1990s, seemed surprised when a black man was “well-spoken.” Jordan’s ease of speaking and ability to relate to people of all backgrounds went a long way toward changing that perception to the masses.
[6] It’s hard to write about the 1990s without including at least one Seinfeld reference. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. An author’s personal stylistic preference is no one’s business but his own.
[7] It’s an incredibly small sample size, admittedly, but both authors of this book – neither of whom was born in Chicago (one in Washington, one in Pennsylvania) – ended up with strong Chicago ties. Adam attended the University of Chicago for law school; Brian has had grandparents and a sister live there, and ran his first marathon there.
[8] The other cable superstation was TBS, an Atlanta station that ultimately acquired NBA national television rights to broadcast, instead of simply Hawks games, an NBA game of the week, which invariably would feature Jordan’s Bulls as often as possible.
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