Ch. 1free to read
Michael Jordan
What It’s About
Michael Jordan is the best basketball player ever. He is also an actor and entrepreneur. He is worth more than a billion dollars and his brand is growing by more than $2.25 billion a year. This imaginative, unique and well-researched biography was written by Roland Lazenby, who also wrote biographies of Phil Jackson, Kobe Bryant and Jerry West.
Three Key Ideas
The Engine Behind the Drive
Jordan's relentless competitiveness came not from love of the game alone but from early wounds, a father's dismissal, and a brother's daily challenges in the backyard.
Coachability Over Raw Talent
Jordan described himself as a sponge, and his willingness to be corrected by coaches like Dean Smith turned natural gifts into the greatest career in basketball.
Greatness Extracts a Price
The same drive that brought six championships also produced strained relationships, gambling headlines, and an internal engine Jordan could never fully switch off.
Read a Sample
The Boy Who Seemed to Fly
A defender once stood flat-footed as Michael Jordan drove the lane, and for a moment the man forgot to move. Roland Lazenby opens his biography with that image, and it's easy to see why: it captures what Jordan did to almost everyone around him. He held them suspended, the same way he seemed to hold himself in the air.
The flying was the first mystery. Physics professors, and even an Air Force colonel, studied his hang time and came to the same flat conclusion: it was an illusion. Jordan built up so much momentum at liftoff that the eye read the whole arc as a pause at the top. The entire trip from the foul line to the rim took barely one second. There wasn't any real hang. There was only the impression of one, and the impression was enough. Elgin Baylor and Julius Erving had done versions of it before him. But they played in an era that didn't have the video technology to slow it down and feed it back to the world. Jordan showed up just as the cameras were ready. Watching his own tape one day, he asked himself, "Was I flying? It sure seemed like it, at least for a short time."
The illusion built an empire. His persona drove Nike's rise and made him its young emperor, a role that both freed him and locked him in. A 1991 Gatorade commercial set the whole thing to music. "Sometimes I dream that he is me. If I could be like Mike." For a generation of kids, that jingle turned into a kind of mantra. One writer said that when Jordan walked through the old Chicago Stadium, it was like the Messiah walking by. Tim Hallam, the Bulls' public relations man, was only half joking when he called him Jesus and asked assistants, "Have you seen Jesus today?"
Who It’s For
- Anyone who wants to understand what separates elite competitors from merely talented athletes.
- Anyone who is curious about how family history and early hardship shape extraordinary ambition.
- Anyone who follows basketball and wants the full, unvarnished story behind the Jordan legend.
- Anyone who wonders what the personal cost of world-class greatness actually looks like up close.
About the Author: Roland Lazenby
Roland Lazenby is a sports journalist and biographer who has spent decades covering professional basketball. He is known for deeply researched, character-driven portraits of the game's most significant figures.
In addition to this biography of Michael Jordan, Lazenby has written books on Phil Jackson, Kobe Bryant, and Jerry West. His approach combines historical research with extensive interviews to examine the forces that shape elite competitors.
