Michael Jordan is easily one of the best players to grace the basketball court. Drafted in 1984, MJ was a superstar since the day he was drafted. Playing for the Chicago Bulls who hadn’t had much success before, many did not think that Jordan would swing the needle for the team and make them a successful team in the Eastern Conference.
But Jordan immediately got to work with the Bulls. Despite lacking a good supporting cast, MJ would often lead the Bulls to the playoffs. Eventually, Chicago built a great team around Jordan and it immediately showed in their results. Winning three championships in a row is a very rare feat. Not only did MJ and the Bulls achieve the same, but they also did it twice in the same decade, making the Bulls perhaps one of the best teams in NBA history.
Michael Jordan Reveals How A Coin Flip Decided That He Would End Up As The Third Pick In The 1984 Draft
With 6 championships, 6 Finals MVP trophies, 5 MVP trophies, and 10 scoring titles, one might argue that the 13-year stint Jordan had with the Bulls was perhaps the best by a player. Given how many accolades he had, it is a mystery how Jordan ended up as the third pick in his draft.
In an interview back in 2005, MJ revealed exactly how a coin flip was instrumental in deciding Jordan’s draft position.
“Back in those days, the draft was based on wins and losses. So at the time, Philly was in the third slot… But Chicago started losing games. In those days, if you lost games, you could move up in the draft. So once Chicago moved into third place, Philly moved to fifth because Dallas was coming in as an expansion team and they had the fourth pick. I could have easily gone back to the fifth pick.”
“But then we got assurance from Houston that if they lost the coin flip to Portland, they’d take me—it was a coin flip between the top two teams to determine the first pick. But if Houston won the coin flip, they said they were going to take Hakeem Olajuwon. And that’s exactly what happened. Hakeem Olajuwon went to Houston, and Portland went to its fallback pick, which was Sam Bowie.”
“If Portland had won the coin flip, they would have taken Hakeem, and I would have ended up in Houston. But the coin flip came up Houston, and that put me back to third with Chicago.”
It is crazy to imagine that Jordan could have ended up either in the second spot or in the fifth spot in the 1984 draft. Ultimately, the Trail Blazers who took a gamble by not picking Jordan faltered while the Bulls, who were nowhere near being a championship contender, became the best team in the NBA in the 90s. Could Jordan have achieved the success he had with the Bulls with any other team?
