Michael Franzese (Long Island Don) was on the Rome Show today talking about betting in sports, and one of the callers had a great question in regards to Jordan. The caller asked if Franzese thought that Jordan left the game due to gambling/mob issues. Franzese said that in his opinion, there was a good chance that Jordan did leave basketball due to issues with gambling, and leaving the game might have been his "payment". They brought up the fact that if he was burnt out, why did he try baseball, etc.

If you look back at that time, there seems to be some correlation with the time his gambling issues came out and his retirement.

So what do you all think? Possible, probable, improbable, or impossible?

improbable. he retired so he would still have the "greatest player ever" legacy, instead of continuing to play and get a "played too long" legay

It's possible, but I don't think any of us hear ever need to say anything bad about MJ. Don't even speculate about his airness. Please take this topic off of talkbulls.com b/c MJ was the man, will always be the man, and he won 6 titles. Sorry it wasn't 8 but I'll never complain about having 6.

I won't totally rule it out since he was notorious for gambling large amounts of money.

However, it seems unlikely to me. Back before the age of free agency where players were getting paid peanuts relative to today I could DEFINITELY see it, but we're talking about a guy that could basically print money. Sure, that was in his pre-$30 mil contract days, but besides his NBA salary he was still raking in north of $50 mil in endorsements, and there was pretty much always the potential for more.

The only way that could be the case of one of two things happened:

1) He racked up an 8-figure debt somehow. Even for someone like Michael that could be hard to swallow, it's hard to have that much in liquid assets. That'd actually put a dent in the lifestyle he could afford for a year or two, so it's somewhat conceivable that he might have taken that alternative. That still seems pretty unlikely though, as media-savvy as he was he'd have probably coughed up the cash and tried to keep it quiet and deal with the consequences.

2) He refused to pay the debt on matters of principal. Maybe he felt he got cheated, or they charged him an obscene interest rate on a large debt (with his busy schedule it might be hard for him to make some deadlines), or he didn't feel he had to because he was such a public figure. THEN I could see that as being a possibility, especially since you know he had a huge ego. You could even tie in another potential conspiracy theory there: the mob/bookie didn't take the insult well and felt they had to send him a message, thus they hired some punks to kill his father and make it look like a robbery. I could definitely see that forcing his hand.

However, all of that is HIGHLY unlikely, I can't imagine someone with Michael's means and noteriety taking risks like that. It's even worse than the steriod speculation, you have nothing concrete to go on at all.

There was also the more sinister speculation that involved the death of MJ's dad. Nothing was ever proven, or anything like that, but I do remember the whispers about the timing of it all.

I believe they are referring to the first of three retirements.

Anyhoo, it was more linked to his murdered father than anything. His dad loved baseball, it was a tribute to him. He found his way back to the Bulls and to domination and his is one of the greatest stories in professional sports.

was his dad's death linked to gambling?

No, but with something like that, a seemingly totally random killing of the father of the biggest sports star in the world, there are always going to be people who ask the conspiracy questions.

Jordan was an old guy in basketball years when he retired. It wasn't because of gambling..

Not the first time, which everyone is talking about. He only had 9 years in the league and was 30 at the time. For an NFL runningback that's fairly old, for a basketball player that's definitely an early retirement, even if you factor in the large number of playoff games. It was pretty clear he still had a lot of mileage left when he came back for 3 more dominant years, and then even had two more pretty solid ones 4 years later after that stretch.

i amgoin to get FLAMED for this but......i dont really like jordan! i DO NOT think he is the greatest player of all time....i think he's the 2nd greatest wilt Chamberlain is AMAZING! ran a 10.9 in the 100 and his rookie year had a 37 27 season. i know the competition wasnt nearly as good but i still think its amazing. also had a 50 25 season. AMAZING!

get out

While I liked Wilt, being 7'1" and weighing 275 helps just a bit. He was still a physical freak that would dominate in any era, but so was Michael (minus the height obviously), and he was considerably more skilled.

ah ok, I thought you were talking about the last time he retired. I thought the first time was because he wanted to play baseball?

That's what he did when he retired, but there was a lot going on then. It was just months after his dad was killed. And this thread is bringing up the gambling rumor that always dogged him (I've even heard Marriotti bring up the Gambling/Retirement 1 link before, IIRC).

Read "The Jordan Rules"

Then get back to this thread. The guy had a serious problem

In the Rome interview with Franzese said there were a lot more major athletes betting than the public knows about. He also said that players like Jordan can easily wager 6, 7, and 8 figure bets.