When 948 Cancelled Games Were a Blessing in Disguise for Michael Jordan and NBA Fans in 1995

When Michael Jordan retired for the first time from basketball, viewership and interest in the NBA dipped massively. The face of the league had just left the sport at his peak and this was not good for the league. But when the Major League Baseball strike happened in 1994, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the NBA fans and even Michael Jordan.

Michael Jordan retired from the NBA in 1993. He had just won his third championship in a row and was at the pinnacle of the sport. At the same time, Jordan lost his father to a homicide. And he was also suffering from the burnout of being a celebrity. All this caused Jordan to announce that he was retiring from the game of basketball.

Michael Jordan later decided to try his hand at baseball. He tried out a stint in Minor League Baseball and struggled to prosper as pro.

Michael Jordan returned to the NBA after the 1994-95 baseball strike

In 1994, there was strike in Major League baseball. This caused over 948 games to be canceled. At the same time, there were talks that Jordan would become a replacement player in Major League Baseball. And Jordan did not want that to happen.

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His Airness recalled how the strike helped him come back to basketball. He said, ” If baseball didn’t have the strike, I would have still been playing baseball at that time. So I got back home, I was kind of inactive., I was really bored”

“So I went to practice, I saw Scottie, I saw Phil, and saw all the old guys. That’s when Scottie started to work on me,” he added.

Scottie Pippen pushed for Jordan to come back to practice. And when he actually started to, he felt his love for the game come back. Additionally, the sense of competition also returned in him. Jordan eventually announced he was coming back in 1995 and subsequently helped the Bulls make the playoffs that year. However, they would lose to the Orlando Magic in the Conference semifinals.

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But once he got back to his full fitness, there was no stopping Jordan. He won three more titles in a row before retiring again in 1998. He would again come back in 2001 for two years before finally retiring in 2003. If the baseball strike didn’t happen, Jordan may never have made his comeback to the Bulls.