“Are You Kidding Me?” – Michael Jordan Brutally Shut Down Denny Hamlin’s “Terrible” $150 Million Business Plan Before Being Convinced Later

NASCAR is a sport dominated by the old teams. Teams like Hendrick Motorsports and Richard Petty Motorsports have taken the larger chunk of race wins and trophies. But Michael Jordan came out on a limb, invested a lot of money in his friend, and might just have broken the code for NASCAR.

Hamlin was friends with Michael Jordan much before they decided to become co-owners of a NASCAR team. But it took some convincing for Denny to make the NBA legend agree to take a gamble on NASCAR as a business avenue. Speaking to Danica Patrick in a YouTube video, Denny narrated the whole story.

“I got my team to type up a business plan… They worked day and night to get this business plan and I gave it to him… He gave it to his business people and they spent about a month getting NASCAR 101 education… First day they asked me, “Are you kidding me? This is a terrible business model.” I said I know but it could it get better. It’s possible that it could get better.”

“We decided to pull the trigger a month later. He says I’m in. We started a race team, its now been 18 months. We’ve won 3 races in the year and three quarters… It’s unbelievable,” he said.

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$150 million might not be a huge amount for multi-millionaires like Jordan, but it isn’t peanuts. It must have taken immense courage to take a gamble on a sport you have no firsthand experience with, but he did go on to do it. And it looks like it is working out for the pair.

How did Hamlin and Michael Jordan plan on buying a team?

For most people, the assumption would have been that Denny and Michael must have planned for a long time about getting into the NASCAR business model. But seeing Danica’s astonishment at the story Denny narrates, it’s clear that’s the wrong idea to keep.

Hamlin narrated how the two friends came to plan about purchasing a stake in a NASCAR team in the first place. He said, “Actually, a speculative article came out and it said that Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan were looking to purchase a minority stake in Richard Petty Motorsports It was actually not true, I had never talked to Jordan about it at all.”

“A lot of it started from the rumors from the ownership at RPM at the time, they had other celebrity people who were looking to buy a minority stake and people just assumed it was Michael Jordan ‘cause I was friends with him. I sent the headline to Michael, thinking “let’s just see what he says here”. He said it’s obviously not true but if you wanna make it true, let me know.”

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Rumors with absolutely no base or credibility ended in the two friends purchasing a team and running it successfully. If this isn’t serendipity, what is?