Everything that is known about the death of Michael Jordan's father: "He was my support"

• Michael Jordan: The Shadows of His Career

The journalists who followed the ' Dream Team ' during the Barcelona 92 ​​Olympics maintain that Michael Jordan's decision to withdraw from basketball was already thought out before his third championship with the Chicago Bulls .

The '23' was tired, exhausted under pressure from the press, fans and all that it means to 'be Michael Jordan' in the early 1990s. His ultimate goal was to achieve what neither Magic Johnson nor Larry Bird had accomplished. with Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics: Win three rings in a row.

Jordan reached his goal at the end of the 92-93 season, so according to his theory, he had nothing more to achieve on the track. Not a bit of motivation. Hence the announcement of his retirement that summer.

But there is much more.

In the seventh episode of 'The Last Dance ', the ESPN and Netflix documentary about the career of the legendary Bulls player, delves into the circumstances prior to the announcement of Jordan's first withdrawal, and some things still surprise to day of today.

Although the 'show', in which the basketball player and his environment have had a lot to do, explains some of the causes of this withdrawal, he goes on tiptoe and without much interest in others that even today have no response.

" The urban legend is that I kicked him out of the league for his love of the game . It is absurd, somewhat baseless. It is not true," explains David Stern, who died on January 1 of this year. But for years, conspiracy (and not conspiracy) theories about an alleged secret suspension from the league to Michael have been ongoing.

Despite everything, and looking at Jordan's reflections on that decision in the summer of 1993, it is easy to understand that his father's death had a major weight in his decision to move away from basketball for a time.

James Jordan was missing for weeks during July 1993 , until police found his lifeless body, with two gunshot wounds, in a stream in South Carolina. Two men are serving life in prison today for that incident: Larry Martin Demery and Daniel Andre Green , who were 17 and 18 at the time. The two young men had shot Jordan while he took a nap inside his vehicle.

In 1995, Demery pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and testified against Green. Now 44, he has sought parole on several occasions, but has been denied it, according to information from 'The New York Times'. Green, for his part, maintains to this day his innocence and has tried, without success, to hold a new trial.

In his statement, Demery claimed that Green walked to Jordan's father's Lexus with the intention of stealing from him. According to him, while the man was sleeping, Green shot him.

Demery testified that Green walked to the Lexus with the intention of holding Jordan at gunpoint and stealing it. When Jordan was napping, Demery said Green shot him while Demery was nearby.

But Green's statement was totally different. He claimed that the day before Jordan's father was allegedly killed, he was at a party with Demery, and that he was gone for a few hours and returned at night, and admitted that he had shot a man on the highway . He asked him to help hide the body, and Green accepted.

According to the reports of the time, the police could not study Jordan's body too much because he was very decomposed, having been in the stream for weeks.

The authorities maintain to this day the version that it was a violent incident but, as the documentary shows, during that time numerous speculations leaked about the relationship between Jordan's love of gambling and the death of his father. " I was devastated, " Michael acknowledges today. "It was the voice of reason, my support, it inspired me ... I tried to see the positive in the negative, which was what he always told me ... The people who told those stories and speculations did it to hurt me."

Two months after that, Jordan retired . "It comforts me to know that my father has seen my last game," he said at the press conference. "It has made me realize how short life is, how things happen quickly. There are times in life when you have to put the sport aside. I want to spend more time with my family, because I have been very selfish during this time and I have dedicated everything to basketball, "he said that day, although he admitted that his father's death had not been the reason for his goodbye to basketball.

" I have nothing more to demonstrate , I have no more challenges. It has nothing to do with the death of my father or the pressure of the media or something different from that. I have achieved everything I could in basketball, " he said.

You've already seen this: Jordan tried baseball and came back just over a year later to win three more championships with the Bulls.

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