Michael Jordan Quiz
As a teenager, Michael Jordan was once left off his school's top team.
A Michael Jordan quiz with answers that follows his basketball career from university to six championships. It covers numbers that no longer change: titles, draft position, shirt numbers and scoring records.
Did you know?
- For one game in 1990 Jordan wore the number 12 with no name on the back. His usual shirt had been stolen from the dressing room before a match in Orlando, and the only spare the team carried was a blank one. He still scored 49 points.
- His first professional contract contained an unusual condition that he insisted on. Known as the 'love of the game' clause, it allowed him to play basketball anywhere, at any time, including casual games in parks, which clubs normally forbid for fear of injury.
- While filming the 1996 film 'Space Jam' he asked for somewhere to train. The studio built a full basketball court in a tent beside the set, and so many professional players came to join the evening games that it became a legend in its own right.
The career of Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan was born in New York in 1963 and grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was a keen baseball player as a boy and only became a basketball standout in his last years at school, after a growth spurt and a famously stubborn summer of practice. Three seasons at university and a gold medal at the 1984 Olympic Games followed before he turned professional. At 1.98 metres he was not unusually tall for a professional player.
Building a champion
The Chicago Bulls were a struggling team when he arrived. He was an immediate star, but the club needed seven years, a new coach and stronger team-mates to win a title. Once it did, it won three in a row. The team's patient passing system, known as the triangle, was designed so that opponents could not simply surround its best player. Jordan himself led the league in scoring year after year while the team was being built.
A brand of his own
In 1985 a sportswear company released a shoe in his name. The first model broke the league's rules on shoe colours, and the company turned the resulting fines into an advertising campaign. The line grew into one of the best-known brands in sport and showed how an athlete's name could sell products around the world, including to people who had never watched a game.
After the last shot
He retired three times in all, the last in 2003 after two seasons in Washington. He later became the majority owner of an NBA team in his home state, the first former player to do so, and sold most of his share in 2023. A documentary series about his final championship season was watched by millions worldwide in 2020. In 2016 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States.