Photo Credit: VINCENT LAFORET/AFP/Getty Images

‘Never Seen Before’ Footage Of Michael Jordan Destroying Regular Joes In Pick-Up Games During 1st Retirement

On October 6, 1993, Michael Jordan announced his retirement from basketball, due to a loss of desire to play the game, and the death of his father.

The sudden retirement of the world’s greatest player, while at his absolute prime at the young age of 30, sent a shockwave throughout the entire NBA world.

To surprise fans, media and officials even more, Jordan signed a Minor League Baseball contract with the Chicago White Sox to pursue the dream of his father, who had always envisioned his son as a baseball player.

In March 1995, Jordan decided to quit baseball and announced his return to the NBA through a now infamous two-word press release: “I’m back.”

But Jordan also played some pick-up basketball in local Chicago gyms during his baseball stint, against the average Joe.

SportsChannel Chicago, a former regional sports network that doesn’t exist anymore no longer in existence once sent a cameraman to the gym to get some footage of Jordan playing against regular people. This amazing footage now has emerged, almost 30 years later.

Per Sports Illustrated:

A clip from the resulting SportsChannel segment went semi-viral on Twitter last month, which led a man named Ben Terrell to go digging around his basement for a VHS tape that had been down there for 26 years. Terrell, who played with Jordan that night, was the one who tipped off SportsChannel anchor Steve Kashul, the husband of an old friend, that Jordan was at the gym. Kashul gave him a tape of the segment as a keepsake, which featured not only the SportsChannel segment but also all the raw footage of Jordan that cameraman Dyrol Joyner had captured.

“A couple people in my family have seen it, a few friends, but it’s very limited,” Terrell told SI. “I’ve had this video forever. I was kinda worried that I was going to go down to the basement, put it in the VCR and it would just be dust.”