When someone reaches the levels that Michael Jordan reached in his life, in terms of success and fame, the rules change entirely. Any semblance of a normal life is lost, with people mobbing you wherever you go and wanting a piece of your time, however small it may be. Arguably, no one was bigger than MJ during the 90s, everyone wanted to be ‘like Mike’.
And if this phenomenon is intense in the normal world, it gets ten times worse when someone goes back to where they’re from. MJ grew up in the town of Wilmington, North Carolina. And while people there didn’t always believe he would become as great as he did, they certainly wanted his time once he did make it.
Jordan spoke about what it was like for him to go to church after he made it as an NBA superstar. He addressed why he stopped going altogether after a point, explaining in a GQ interview that it was super difficult for him to feel the same way he used to when he was growing up.
“When I go to church,” Michael says, “any church I go to, it doesn’t seem like Church to me, because everybody stares. I went back to my Church in Wilmington a few times since I’ve been in the pros, and it really hasn’t been the same old Church. It’s more or less ‘Well, Michael is here today, let’s have him speak for us.'”
There is almost a level of ownership that exists amongst folk once one of their own makes it big in life, and that can be difficult to deal with. For Jordan, no place was probably the same once he became the most exciting athlete in all sports, which is its kind of struggle. It would be interesting to know if and how MJ’s take on all of this has changed since he retired.
