Was Michael Jordan appreciated during his prime years, or did the appreciation came after his retirement?
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
Exclusive insights, data, and analysis for financial market experts.
Search
Have an existing account?
Sign In
He was being called the GOAT by his peers before winning any championships.
Bobby Knight was calling him the best basketball player in the world before his first NBA game. Larry Bird was calling him “God disguised as Michael Jordan” in his second season. When the Pistons KO’d the Bulls in the 1990 playoffs, CBS interviewed MJ instead of anyone from the winning team.
MJ was plenty appreciated.
Are u kidding, guy was the most famous person alive, in an era with no Internet, no social media, when most of the Europe couldn’t even watch NBA. There are countries who don’t even play basketball where people knew who he was.
Have you ever seen the NBA ratings before and after Jordan retired? That right there should be a good indication of how revered he was…not to mention how popular the Jordan shoes are/were.
His peers, including Larry Bird who literally called him god, were calling him the best in the league by the end of his sophomore year.
He was one of the 3 most famous people on earth in the 90’s.
By the end of his first threepeat his peers, announcers, and really anyone involved in basketball were openly calling him the greatest of all time and it wasn’t like “this guy could be etc etc” it was straight up “michael jordan is the greatest ever” in a way that implied, correctly, that there really was no actual debate from anyone.
Maybe the only one to be truly appreciated while he’s prime.
Man, I miss the monoculture. Everything felt bigger and more important.
Oh yes. NIKE soared for that reason. The man was not just appreciated within the basketball world… it was all of sports.
“That was God disguised as Michael Jordan”- Larry Bird…. One of the best ever, at the peak of his career, leading one of the greatest teams of all time said this about MJ after a playoff game that the Celtics didn’t even lose. People knew he was special very early on, and this was coming from a guy who HATED acknowledging how good other players were, at least publicly, because he was so competitive
“The best there ever was. The best there ever will be”
Inscribed on his statue after the fist three-peat.
Almost everybody on the planet knew Jordan. He was the biggest star in not just the NBA, but all of sports since Pele.
All the shit about him being an asshole came out after retirement. He had the drive to win and dragged everyone around him and pushed everyone to be better so that he could win. You could also look at that as he did what was necessary to win.
That being said, as a Chicagoland area resident in his time, it was always fun watching the ball go into his hands when the Bulls were down 1 with 5 seconds left.
Grew up in New Jersey as a kid so naturally we were a Knicks household. After Space Jam came out, I was 9 years old and obsessed with Jordan, so I got a bulls hat. My older brother stole it and threw it in the garbage lol
He was definitely appreciated I would say
He was THE most popular athlete in the entire world in the 90s
Edit: To those of you trying to argue that soccer players are the most popular athletes in the world, please read my comment again. I specifically said “in the 90s.” I was NOT referring to the year 2025, so please go troll elsewhere. You’re an idiot if you think Jordan was not the most iconic athlete of the 90s, worldwide.
I wasn’t around during it but from my understanding wasn’t he already considered the greatest player of all time before he even won a ring?
He was the most famous human on the planet. I Grew up in Chicago during his run and he was basically God. Every game felt like you were watching the greatest athlete of all time in any sport.
We knew he was the GOAT.
While he was still playing, he literally may have been the most famous person on the planet.
Own hundred percent yes .
He was a legend from his time as a 18 year old freshman hitting the title winning shot
To dominating the 1984 Olympics . To his amazing rookie season – to his incredible play against the 86 Celtics
And that’s before acquiring. Pippen and starting to win
Jordan single handedly made basketball a worldwide game dude.
He was arguably the most appreciated active athlete in the world since Ali
Been a Sixers fan most of my life, but back in the prime Jordan days, my dad and I never missed a televised Bulls game to watch Jordan play. There simply was/is/never will be anyone like him in my opinion.
Have you seen the Original Space Jam the plot of that movie should answer your question
He’ll yes he was appreciated! As a Pistons fan I hated him but he was then and still is the best I ever saw.
Le Bron is close but Jordan was way more intense. A killer on the floor.
Larry Bird said he was God disguised as a man in ‘86.
That’s some high ass praise.
If social media existed during Jordan’s era, he would be makin 1 billion dollars a year
OP this is a great question and I can confidentially say I’ve never seen an athlete command such attention before or since. He was the shit and everyone knew it. The hype was unreal and completely deserved. It was an amazing time to be alive and witness Jordan.
People who didn’t live it aren’t really capable of grasping what someone like Michael Jordan was to the world because times have changed so drastically since then. He was a new law of physics in a basketball landscape that had barely discovered the periodic table. He was the Beatles and the world was like those teenage girls in the front row that screamed until they passed out. 100% true believer type of worship.
He was the biggest sports star ever to exist. The hallways in school were filled with Jordan and Bulls gear. It was mainly Jordan but his fame elevated others too. Lots of kids dying their hair like Rodman and a lot of Pippen jerseys.
The only sports game I ever videotaped was his return from retirement when he wore the 45 jersey. I don’t know why but I convinced myself I had to document it. I’d have no way of watching it now and could find a much higher resolution copy on YouTube but at the time it felt otherworldly.
He got goat stuff pushed at him during his first three peat
He was. I mean we called him his Airness
As a die-hard Sonics Fan back then I HATED MJ and the Bulls. And I always felt I was alone with this. Absolutely everyone around me saw him as a godlike figure. Even people that did not take any major interest in Basketball…
He was revered all over the planet
Bobby Knight called MJ “the best Basketball player that I’ve ever seen play” in 1984 before he even put on a Bulls uniform.
I can tell you weren’t alive during the early 90s. Saying he was appreciated is an understatement, to say the least.
He was definitely appreciated during his time. He was must watch tv even for non sports fans. Fans of other teams loved Jordan, sometimes more than their own team. Everyone wore his jersey and his shoes. He was constantly in tv commercials and print ads. He made guest appearances all the time. Anything with Jordan on it was guaranteed to sell. Every player at the time was compared against him and always came up short. No player since has gained the popularity he had. Not Kobe, not Steph, and not Lebron.They are mega stars for sure, but they still had their haters. Almost no one hated Mike.
Jordan’s fame was unprecedented – everyone on earth knew who he was and wanted to watch his every move, and he made the NBA a global phenomenon.
There’s a great documentary from 2012 called, “The Dream Team” that is eye opening if you weren’t alive in the 90s.
1991 was Jordan mania
His coming out of retirement was even on the news here in the UK, i got to see the second 3-peat and thats how i started watching basketball. Such an amazing player and career, the greatest ever.
The only sports I’ve ever watched involved Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson, and my kids. One of my favorite memories is when I had a layover in Chicago when the Bulls were in the championships, and the entire airport was absolutely insane with excitement.
Jordan was considered the goat before he even got a ring. So yes. By 99 he was considered athlete of the century.
Lebron is simply not in Jordan’s level.
People never despised Jordan, they hated he was beating their teams, but they knew what they were witnessing, even at MSG.
Lebron is far, far more hated than Jordan, not close. Jordan was one of the most famous and loved ppl on the planet.
The real convo is Lebron better than Kobe, I think he is, but the whole Lebron – Jordan debate is just cooked up. There is no debate, it’s not particularly close.
Like I get other stars have been passed, Brady passed Montana, etc etc, no doubt.
Gretzky and Jordan are two athletes that haven’t been passed though, it will be cool to see it if it happens.
I was hyped to see another player with that potential like Lebron come into the league, many of us were, but after a decade we knew he wasn’t the one.
During his prime he was already being called the greatest ever. The guy was a global phenomenon. Some of his peers were genuinely intimidated by him. His face was on every third ad in the 1990s; he was arguably the most famous athlete in the world at his peak. You just had to be alive at that time to understand how big of a deal Jordan was. Even if you weren’t a basketball fan if you were asked to give an example of a basketball player you could probably easily answer Michael Jordan.
Btw an athletic prime is 27 to 32 years old roughly. And for LeBron that was between 2011 to 2016 so right smack in the middle of his first 3 championships. He was only despised until maybe about 2012 (age 28 season) then 2013 onwards public opinion of him was much more favorable. So he was definitely appreciated during his prime especially when he won in 2016. He was already comfortably considered the 2nd greatest player ever by that point.
Tell you’re a Zoomer without telling me you’re a Zoomer. Literally anyone who has memories from the 90s will tell you Jordan-mania was everywhere and a huge part of the culture back then. Jordan is probably the one athlete in recent memory who was damn near universally adored, even by rival team fans whose hearts he regularly broke.
Like Van Gogh, he will be discovered by most people only after death.
He’s an obscurity.
The only real criticism was that he wasn’t a team player like Magic and Bird. Sure he was exciting to watch, but he was too selfish to ever win championships…
I grew up watching basketball because of Michael. He was a household name even for folks who weren’t interested in basketball (in Germany!). You’d sit glued to your TV for any highlight that you could glimpse, let alone entire games. He was the face of the sport and brought the sport to the world.
Yes. Now keep in mind there was no social media back then and the media was so much different at the time
I would guess if you had spaces such as this where anyone could speak an opinion there would be negative comments about him such as getting all the calls and carrying.
Another thing is that most people just didn’t get into or care as much about athletes lives. MJ was protected in some ways by the media but the things that were rumored, we just didn’t care about. In other words, there wasn’t this morality scale we used to judge who we liked
Keep in mind that the Center was still a big deal so I don’t think everyone saw him as the “GOAT” because you had guys like Kareem and Wilt before him but as a public I don’t remember us obsessing over the GOAT stuff as much as
Last thing is MJ was an international icon like no other basketball player we have seen. He was loved by people from all fan bases, political affiliations, races, religions, countries, whatever. The marketing around him was next level
We are witnessing greatness in players now, the problem is that the loud as negative cynics have a voice and an agenda and at times piss in the pool