Everything surrounding Michael Jordan seems to be kind of mythical. There are countless stories about Jordan, what happened, what didn’t happen, and what could of happen during his era.
It’s well-known and documented that the Chicago Bulls got plenty of offers for His Airness during the Draft day and throughout his career, but a new story claiming he could’ve joined the Boston Celtics in 1994 has recently surfaced after years in the vault.
Apparently, then Celtics General Manager M.L Carr reached out to Jerry Krause to have a conversation regarding Jordan’s contract after his first retirement. Krause denied to even have that conversation, but Carr recently confirmed that he was indeed digging in to try and get Jordan out of retirement:
“As I understand it, Jerry denied having the conversation, which is absolutely not true. We did have a conversation. I reached out to Jerry, realizing that Michael had left the game. I knew Michael was not gone forever. I offered Jerry a first-round draft pick [to just talk with Jordan] and he goes, ‘Well, M.L., Mike is not coming back. He’s retired.’ Well, he is coming back. I think he is. But he denied the fact that I did that, I guess to save face with his owners. … I thought, [Jordan] had already done it in that Chicago uniform, if he got a chance to come to Boston, put on the green, what a great thing that would be from a marketing standpoint. He would have made a fortune. … It didn’t happen. It would have been wonderful,” Carr told Chris Forsberg of NBC Sports Boston.
The Celtics were still trying to get back to the top following Larry Bird’s retirement so they turned their attention to Dominique Wilkins. Also, Carr thought having a superstar like him in the roster would be enough to convince Jordan to come back to the game. Wilkins, however, didn’t even know about that so-called plan:
“I don’t think so. It would have been nice. I’d have to love to play with him, are you kidding? But, if that was true, you would have heard about that before now. I must have lost my memory because I don’t remember talking to M.L. about that subject. I think I would have remembered it and I don’t. I don’t know if there was some miscalculation of translation. I looked at my notes from my conversation with M.L., and it’s not in my notes,” Wilkins claimed.
Truth or not, you can’t deny that watching Jordan in the green and white would’ve been bizarre. It would’ve made more sense than joining the subpar Washington Wizards, though.
