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In the 1983-1984 NBA
(National Basketball Association) season, before Jordan began to play for the
Chicago Bulls, they had a regular-season record of 27 wins and 55 losses,
placing fifth in the Central Division. Their overall attendance from that
season was 260,950. Besides being a losing team, the Bulls were playing in the
Chicago Stadium, which was rapidly aging. The Near West Side of Chicago,
surrounding the stadium, was decrepit.
In an interview, Michael Jordan said “In the third game of my career, we were playing Milwaukee [Bucks] and we were down 16 points going into the fourth quarter. People started to leave. That was their whole attitude. The game was over. I'd never experienced people leaving a game like that. It was something new. Everybody at North Carolina stayed until the end of the game, out of respect to the team.” Although the Bulls ended up winning that game, for the first time in his life Jordan experienced fans that had given up on their team.
Michael Jordan was
drafted by the NBA’s Chicago Bulls in 1984, and quickly became a star player.
Jordan’s dominance of the game permanently changed the sport of basketball and
generated an estimated $9,000,000,000 of revenue between 1984 and 1998. His
athleticism and popularity led to the construction of the United Center, and a
financial breath of life being blown into the Near West Side.
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"The neighborhood, one of the oldest in Chicago, was populated mostly by whites until blacks migrated from the South after World War II. White machine politicians kept control until the 1980s, doing nothing to maintain city services. Residents say the downward slide accelerated in 1968 with the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The burned shops and factories were never rebuilt." -- Chicago Tribune, 1994  A decrepit-looking Chicago Stadium. Photo from www.blackhawkup.com "Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” -- Michael Jordan  Michael Jordan dunking during one of his seasons playing at North Carolina University.
Photo from www.theesportsblog.com |
| The $9 Billion Dollar Man |
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