When Michael Jordan was deciding whether or not to come back to the NBA in 1995, his agent’s right-hand man Curtis Polk admitted that he didn’t expect him to return. At that time, Polk noticed that the NBA legend was so focused on getting his baseball skills to the level of where his basketball skills had been, which was why it didn’t seem like Jordan was going to come back.
“If it wasn’t for the baseball strike, I’m not sure he would’ve come back at that time, or ever. He was really enjoying himself—he really liked the camaraderie with the guys and the less fanfare around him—even though he wasn’t anywhere as successful in baseball…,” Polk told Bleacher Report’s Jared Zwerling.
The challenges of MJ’s return
The 1995 Major League Baseball lockout went on for 232 days, which is the longest work stoppage in America’s professional sports history. According to Polk, this is what led Jordan to come back to basketball, as the six-time champion wanted to return to the game sooner than he was advised to.
Chris, however, advised MJ against coming back so soon because he felt that the latter wasn’t physically built for basketball anymore after spending more than a year playing professional baseball.
“We recognized that he had developed different muscles for baseball—slow-twitch muscles versus fast-twitch,” Polk said. “He had bulked up in baseball, particularly in the upper body, and those are things that weren’t necessarily compatible to him just stepping out quickly onto the basketball court.”
While Jordan took Polk’s advice into consideration and even acknowledged that it was true, he still came back to the NBA sooner than expected—Mike felt that he could step in and help the Bulls right away.
The legendary shooting guard initially wanted to return during playoffs, but his head coach Phil Jackson insisted that he played 20 regular season games first. Jordan countered by saying he’d do 10 to 15 but eventually met Jackson halfway and appeared in 17 contests.
“I’m back”
As soon as Jordan informed Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf that he was coming back, his agent David Falk informed former NBA commissioner David Stern and NBC Sports chairman Dick Ebersol about it right away. Both parties talked about how they would announce Michael’s return, and it didn’t take long for Falk to write the draft about it and how much “His Airness” missed the game.
Interestingly enough, Falk took about four attempts to write the press release but Jordan wasn’t satisfied with any of them. The Bulls legend wanted to announce his return by keeping it simple and straight to the point.
“He felt that it didn’t require an explanation or a justification,” Falk said, who faxed the final press release to media outlets. “I thought I was a pretty good writer, written a lot of things, but he said, ‘Let me do this.’ So he sat down at the table and thought about it for a couple of minutes, and he wrote, ‘I’m back.’ He said, ‘OK, that’s it.’ It was classic Michael Jordan. It was elegant in simplicity, it communicated how he felt, it said it all.”
Jordan didn’t need to come out with many words to depict how much he missed the game because his play did that for him. After his return in 1995, the greatest basketball player of all time won three more championships, two more MVPs, and three more Finals MVPs, among others.