Michael Jordan Flew From The Daytona 500 To Cleveland For The 75th Anniversary Team Celebration

On Sunday night, the 2022 NBA All-Star Game in Cleveland featured a halftime event to honor the league’s 75th anniversary team, which presented something of a conundrum for Michael Jordan.

The Hall of Famer, Hornets owner, and for many the Greatest Of All-Time, was going to be a headliner for the league, which saw a few stars not make the trip to Cleveland. Coincidentally on Sunday his NASCAR team had two cars in the Daytona 500 that afternoon, with Bubba Wallace and Kurt Busch both in the field. Jordan wasn’t going to miss that, and he got to see Wallace finish second in a thrilling race that dragged on pretty well into the evening due to some gnarly crashes.

There was some genuine concern Jordan may not make it, as he wasn’t in the group photo before the game, but thanks to a private jet that was gassed up and ready to go near the track, he arrived in time for the guards to be announced about three hours after the race ended in Florida.

When he walked out, unsurprisingly, he got one of the biggest ovations, along with LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaq, and when Kobe Bryant was shown on the jumbotron.

It was quite the scene in Cleveland seeing all of those legends on stage and it wouldn’t have been the same without Jordan, so it was good he was able to pull double duty.