“Hi, everybody,” one video began. “Michael Jordan here.”
In the address aimed at NBA players, coaches and staff inside the league’s Orlando bubble in 2020, Jordan wore a black beret while standing in a front of a framed No. 23 Chicago Bulls jersey.
And soon into the nearly-minute-long video, Jordan began sharing insight about a dry rosé wine from California’s central coast made from pinot noir vines planted in the 1970s.
“Take it from MJ,” he closed while raising a glass of wine toward the camera. “Rosé all day.”
The video was part of a series of virtual tastings during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. The person leading them wasn’t the Bulls’ six-time NBA champion superstar, but rather a California-based master sommelier who — as fate would have it — bears the same name.
“It’s always hilarious,” the 65-year-old Jordan told ESPN recently. “Because I’m a short, white Michael Jordan — and an Italian. It’s crazy. I loved coming up and Michael was making my name famous, and he was my hero too. Nobody had done what he had done.”
The 5-foot-4 Jordan heard a few remarks from players during some of the sessions, namely, “Who’s this Michael Jordan guy?”
But the seeds from those sessions ultimately bore fruit.
Three years later, in October 2023, Joseph Graziano, the NBA’s senior vice president and head of global event strategy & development, contacted Jackson Family Wines, the Northern California-based wine company where Jordan works as a wine educator.
Graziano relayed to Bill O’Connor, executive vice president and chief sales officer at Jackson Family Wines, what has become more obvious in recent years: the NBA is a wine-centric league, and it was time to forge its first-ever wine partnership.
Months later, details were hammered out with two brands from the company’s global portfolio: The NBA would partner with Kendall-Jackson, a Sonoma-based winery founded in 1982, and the WNBA with La Crema, another Sonoma-based winery founded in 1979.
The four-year partnership, announced Thursday, will lead to an array of wine-centric experiences at NBA and WNBA events with specific pop-up tasting and education also tailored to fans. There’s also a goal of creating commemorative wines for the NBA and WNBA.
The deal represents a significant step in the booming relationship between wine and the NBA — a movement that some of the game’s biggest names have propelled forward.
In recent years, Stephen Curry, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, CJ McCollum, James Harden, Kevin Love and Channing Frye have launched private wine labels. Anthony, Wade, McCollum and Chris Paul have hosted wine dinners and spoken on wine panels during the annual Aspen Food & Wine Festival. Teams routinely visit Napa Valley wineries during trips to the Bay Area, and players frequently vacation in wine regions throughout Italy and France.
Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James is especially outspoken about wine, including on social media when he recently addressed a question about what he considers “the perfect wine.”
“I don’t think there’s such a thing as a perfect wine. I think it’s whatever wine that matches well with your palate,” James said, later adding, “I love to drink it. It’s a beautiful thing.”
San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich — the league’s most notable wine connoisseur — recently quipped about his own wine collection in responding to a question about being excited to coach 20-year-old Spurs rookie Victor Wembanyama for several more years.
“I only get excited when I have an older French Bordeaux that I was worried it might be over the hill and I find out it was really perfect — then I get excited,” Popovich said, later adding. “All of my best wines are older than Victor. That’s a true statement.”
The NBA partnership also means that Jordan, one of 15 people to be awarded a certified wine educator diploma and earn the prestigious title of master sommelier, will continue to educate those around the NBA about wine.
Jordan’s initial efforts came about after O’Connor contacted an Orlando Magic executive in the summer of 2020 after reading an ESPN feature story about large shipments of wine entering the bubble.
In that story, then-New Orleans Pelicans guard J.J. Redick bemoaned the lack of quality wine initially available on site. O’Connor saw an opportunity, and 50 cases of wine from the company’s portfolio were then shipped into the bubble. Jordan then led informal virtual tastings for players, coaches and staff — small groups ranging from a few to a couple dozen.
Some sessions were live, some recorded, but the live sessions were sent one-way, so Jordan couldn’t see, exactly, who he was teaching about wine.
For the record, Jordan has never met his namesake and isn’t the only person in the wine industry who shares a name with an NBA icon. For instance, Gregory Popovich is president and founder of the California-based Castle Rock Winery, but, likewise, he has never met the Spurs’ head coach.
Jordan, however, has met several NBA players before, including Lakers icon Kobe Bryant, a frequent guest at Napa Rose, a Disneyland restaurant that Jordan opened. Jordan became close with Bryant — to the point that they once spotted each other in a Macau casino during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Bryant was standing with a group of his teammates from Team USA when he spotted Jordan. “MJ,” Bryant asked, “is that you?”
It’s a memory that Jordan has savored through the years, and he said he’s eager to build more in the league’s new partnership.