#Jordan medal of freedom upgrade

After the 1997-98 season, which we have been reliving in 'The Last Dance,' Phil Jackson looked into the future: 'I know I will be forgotten as soon as this is over. Michael Jordan wasn't destined to just fade away. ONCE MORE HE is the center of our sporting lives. LISTEN: On the ESPN Daily podcast, ESPN senior writer Wright Thompson joins Mina Kimes and reveals how five generations of Jordans made Mike Jordan into the legendary Michael. They'd driven the same roads to and from school. Their fathers had sat together at their games. They ran into each other afterward and laughed and told stories for a good half-hour. It must have been 30 years ago, when the Bulls star came back to his hometown to put on a basketball clinic. And we'd get to the school we were playing, and Mike hadn't been winning the last few hands? He wouldn't let anybody get off the bus.'Īl says he met Michael Jordan only once. There was many times we'd have a game of cards on the activity bus. Some of the memories I have on activity buses going to football, basketball, baseball games.

'We had field days in elementary school where in May you'd go out and have a 100-yard dash,' he says. Checking asphalt reminded him of sweltering long-ago baseball games. He'd leave them out on the porch, but the next morning when he slipped them back on, they'd still be wet. During Al's road crew days, he would go home and his boots would be soaked from all the sweat. It's hard to fathom July heat in New Hanover, Pender and Duplin counties if you don't live there. They competed against each other in Babe Ruth baseball in the brutal North Carolina summers. You have a lot of farm trucks and tractors, pulling trailers of tobacco.'Īl met Mike in the third grade and they were teammates in three sports growing up. 'When you get around Wallace, where Mike's dad was from, that's an ag-type county. 'A lot of agricultural type equipment is running up and down that road,' Edgerton says. The highway cuts through fields and little towns. Al Edgerton, a longtime engineer in the North Carolina Department of Transportation and a grade school classmate of Jordan's, was part of a crew that resurfaced 117 less than a decade ago. There have been Jordans living along that corridor since the Civil War.

117 IS the mother road of Michael Jordan's past. 'One that was a public persona and one that was private.' 'Very early I had a personality split,' Jordan told me once. Someone suggested ringing the doorbell, but they worried about disturbing the current occupants, so his friends just stood there a moment with him, watching Michael Jordan look at the house where he used to live. 'How do most people feel when they go back to see their childhood home?' the person explained. One of the friends with him said later they didn't feel comfortable describing the scene. It's the address where Dean Smith sent recruiting letters. The house, a middle-class split-level, is at 4647 Gordon Road, near U.S. Jordan doesn't go home very often, but he had some friends with him on that trip and wanted to show them where he'd grown up while they were in town. YEARS AGO, AFTER a bad hurricane hit Wilmington, North Carolina, Michael Jordan came back to help the recovery effort.

#Jordan medal of freedom upgrade

Jordan joined his UNC basketball coach Dean Smith, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2013.You have reached a degraded version of because you're using an unsupported version of Internet Explorer.įor a complete experience, please upgrade or use a supported browser He is the definition of somebody so good at what they do that everybody recognizes it. Obama continued, “Because Michael Jordan is the Michael Jordan of greatness. “There is a reason you call somebody, ‘The Michael Jordan of.’” He’s more than just a charitable donor or a business owner committed to diversity. “He’s more than just a logo, more than just an internet meme.

“MJ is still more than those moments, more than just the best player on the two greatest teams of all time – the Dream Team and the 1996 Chicago Bulls,” Obama said. Obama celebrated Jordan for lifting the sport of basketball globally but said there’s more to the legendary Tar Heel. Jordan was one of 21 recipients honored in the nation’s capitol, along with fellow basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and longtime voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers Vin Scully. UNC basketball legend and Charlotte Hornets owner Michael Jordan was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama on Tuesday at the White House.