From Brooklyn to coastal North Carolina

James Jordan Sr. worked as an equipment supervisor at General Electric. Deloris Jordan worked at United Carolina Bank. The family settled on Gordon Road in northeast Wilmington, a working-middle-class neighborhood about ten minutes from Wrightsville Beach. Michael was the fourth of five children — older brother Larry was the family’s first basketball star and the player MJ chased through their backyard hoop battles every afternoon.

Wilmington in the 1970s was a coastal town more known for shipping and tobacco than basketball. The youth-league pipeline was thin. MJ played Babe Ruth baseball — pitching a one-hit shutout to win a state title at age 12 — and didn’t focus on basketball year-round until late middle school.

The Laney High cut that wasn't quite the legend

Michael went to Laney as a 5’10” sophomore in fall 1978. Coach Clifton “Pop” Herring picked Leroy Smith — a 6’7″ sophomore — for the varsity roster instead, and put Jordan on the JV. The fact is widely retold as “Michael Jordan was cut.” The fuller version: he was sent to JV, dominated it (averaging close to 25 a game), grew four inches that summer, and made varsity as a junior.

Jordan said in his 2009 Hall of Fame speech that he kept a Polaroid in his bedroom of the varsity roster without his name on it, and looked at it every morning. Pop Herring was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 2012 with Jordan’s blessing — Michael flew to Charlotte for the ceremony.

What Wilmington looks like now

Laney High School still stands at 2700 N College Road. Its gymnasium was renamed The Michael Jordan Gymnasium in 1996. The school keeps a glass display case of Jordan’s high school jerseys, his first Nike Air Jordan prototype, and a copy of the 1981 yearbook with the senior photo of him in a varsity uniform — the same uniform he hadn’t been allowed to wear two years earlier.

Jordan’s connection to Wilmington runs deep. His youth foundation funded the Michael Jordan Family Medical Clinic at Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center in 2014, and after Hurricane Florence devastated the area in 2018 he donated $2 million to local relief. He still owns a beach house at Wrightsville Beach.

Background facts cross-referenced with the Wikipedia article on Michael Jordan and Pro-Football-Reference / Basketball-Reference public records. Lead image via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).