October 6, 1993, 30 years ago: Michael Jordan retires from professional basketball. He is only 30 years old, does not claim an injury, and is coming off 3 straight NBA Championships with the Chicago Bulls.
The cover of the next issue of Sports Illustrated has a simple headline, with a simple question.
His answer: He had lost his desire to play basketball. He later added that the death of his father, James Jordan, a murder victim in Lumberton, North Carolina 3 months earlier, helped to convince him.
Later still, he said that another factor was not really having an off-season the year before, 1992, because he was leading the U.S. "Dream Team" at the Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Apparently, he was both physically and emotionally exhausted.
There is another explanation, perhaps a more sinister one. During the Bulls' 1993 Playoff series with the New York Knicks, a story got out that he had made the 128-mile trip down to Atlantic City, New Jersey, and did a considerable amount of gambling there. And stories had gotten out that he had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars betting on golf games he was playing.
Now, there has never been any evidence, at least not publicly revealed, that Jordan bet on an NBA game. This is not a Pete Rose situation, as far as we know. But it didn't matter: If a player can be that much in debt to a gambler, he could be pressured to throw a game to pay off the debt.
But then-NBA Commissioner David Stern didn't want to lose the NBA's biggest drawing card and moneymaker. Not for good, anyway. So some people believe that Jordan cut a deal with Stern: Step away from the game for a while, and the investigation would be dropped. Essentially, it was an indefinite suspension.
It lasted for a year and a half. Jordan returned on March 18, 1995, and Stern allowed it. He played through the 1998 season, winning 3 more titles, then retired again. He came back one more time, for 2001-02 and 2002-03, with the Washington Wizards, and finally retired for good. There was never another investigation into his gambling.
But that question on that cover, "Why?", still lingers. Jordan himself has never told the story. Nor did Stern, before his death in 2020.