Michael Jordan is considered perhaps the greatest competitor and biggest star in NBA history, but at the same time, Jordan was an intensely private man off the floor. It’s one of the funny things about him — Jordan was, quite possibly, the most famous human on the planet during his tenure with the Chicago Bulls, but when he was able to get away from basketball, he seemed to relish being able to get out of the spotlight.
Jordan made this clear in a recent interview he gave to Cigar Aficionado. The Hall of Fame inductee explained that he believes social media “has invaded the personalities and personal time of individuals,” citing his friend Tiger Woods. He went on to make the surprising claim that if he played right now, Jordan isn’t sure how he would have done with something as intrusive as Twitter.
“But for someone like myself — and this is what Tiger deals with — I don’t know if I could’ve survived in this Twitter [era], where you don’t have the privacy that you’d want and what seems to be very innocent can always be misinterpreted,” Jordan said.
Again, Jordan was the most famous human on the planet during his heyday with the Bulls, was the pitchman for about 10,000 different things, and came to exemplify greatness in a way that few could ever match, so for him to say this about the current era of basketball is eyebrow-raising. The conversation about the NBA now vs. the NBA back in Jordan’s era usually stems from things like the way the game is played and the physicality of the game, but it never touches on all the stuff around the game that is nigh impossible for players to ignore. It speaks volumes if Jordan of all people believes this would have caused him to struggle.
(H/T BasketballNews.com)
