My favorite basketball player which to many is the best ever
because of how he revolutionized basketball is Michael Jordan. A legend on the
court, Jordan added to his legacy with a totally unexpected retirement just
before the 1993-94 season. After a year spent playing minor league baseball, he
authored yet another amazing chapter to his story by returning to the Chicago
Bulls late in the 1994-95 campaign with his basketball skills intact. In
1995-96 he won a record eighth scoring title and led the Bulls to their fourth
NBA championship of the 1990s, and in 1996-97 he raised those numbers to nine
scoring championships and five NBA crowns in the decade. A summary of Jordan's
basketball career inevitably fails to do it justice. The 6-6 Brooklyn native
attended high school in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he was cut from the
basketball team as a sophomore. He spent his college career at North Carolina,
playing for an NCAA Championship team as a freshman and hitting the
game-winning shot in the title game. He was named College Player of the Year by
The Sporting News in both 1983 and 1984 and won the Naismith and Wooden Awards
in 1984. After his junior year he was chosen with the third overall pick in the
1984 NBA Draft by the Chicago Bulls. Jordan burst into the big time with a
fabulous first season, earning the NBA Rookie of the Year Award in 1984-85
after averaging 28.2 points per game. An injured foot sidelined him for 64
games in his second campaign, but he came back late in the year to score an NBA
playoff-record 63 points in a first-round game against the Boston Celtics.
Starting with the 1986-87 season he began a career-long onslaught on the NBA
record book. That year saw him average 37.1 points in the first of seven
consecutive seasons in which he led the league in scoring (a feat matched only
by Wilt Chamberlain) and topped 30 points per contest. By the time he announced
his retirement in 1993, he had earned three league MVP Awards, an NBA Defensive
Player of the Year selection, a pair of NBA slam-dunk championship titles,
seven berths on the All-NBA First Team and six selections to the NBA
All-Defensive First Team. He also led the league in steals three times. A
nine-time All-Star Game selection, he earned the game's MVP Award in 1988 after
a 40-point performance. More than just a scoring machine, Jordan also showed
that he was a leader and a winner by guiding Chicago to a trio of NBA
Championships.
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