Book Review: “JUMPMAN” by Johnny Smith

90) What more can be written about Michael Jordan? A lot, actually!

Johnny Smith’s - JUMPMAN: The Making and Meaning of Michael Jordan, belongs right next to the other all-time great books on the “Chicago Bulls Dynasty”.

If you really want to know the whole premise of  JUMPMAN, all you have to do is read the Preface of this book. 

“Although I am interested in Jordan’s life and career, this book is not a biography. Rather it explores how the NBA and NIKE, publicists and producers, reporters and fans molded a heroic role for Jordan that transformed him into a myth. In short,  JUMPMAN is about the making and meaning of Michael Jordan.”

-Johnny Smith (P.6 - from the PREFACE) 

PREFACE (def) - an introduction to a book, typically stating its subject, scope, or aims.

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I admire how much research the author did to write this book. I love how it intersects with so many topics I’m interested in. The breadth and scope of Johnny Smith’s research is something to truly marvel at.  Also, each chapter focuses on a different topic on “the making and meaning of Michael Jordan.”

“Rob Strausser, a marketing genius, with “a gambler’s instincts”, convinced Knight to embrace a risky business strategy, allow most of those contracts to expire and invest all the company’s advertising resources into a single basketball phenom. ”

- Johnny Smith p. 18

If you watched the movie AIR, about Michael Jordan signing with Nike, you will especially appreciate how this early part of the book provides the foundation for how “the making and meaning of Michael Jordan” truly started.

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In Chapter Three - the author focuses on the racial and cultural dynamics in Chicago. One of the sources he uses for this chapter is David Remnick’s book The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (2010). 

The Bridge  covers much more than the biography of Obama. It also addresses how Chicago was one of the crucial cities in the passing of the torch for older African American politicians to younger ones.

From the Moses Generation of yesterday, to the Joshua Generation of today, Johnny Smith explains how Michael Jordan fits into that larger narrative.

How Chicago, a city rife with racism and segregation, was so quick to embrace Michael Jordan, is a huge part of the myth-making of him.

The post-racial society people dreamed Michael Jordan was central to, contradicted with the reality of what was happening on the streets of Chicago. Instead of confronting this reality, it was easier for Michael Jordan and the NBA to instead claim “color-blindness”.

Obviously, this desire for “color-blindness” had tremendous financial benefits for Michael Jordan and the NBA.

As the JUMPMAN book points out, Michael Jordan actually never white-washed his racial identity. He always knew himself as a Black Man. Jordan just steered as far away from *politics as possible.

Interestingly enough, Michael Jordan’s outward support for African American causes did come about. It just was long after he finally retired from the NBA for good, when he was already a billionaire.

*In fairness to Michael Jordan, how sports intersects with politics is something that was frequently overlooked during his playing days. And even though the intersectionality of sports and politics has been much more widely discussed today, it still is quite fraught and controversial. 

Despite Michael Jordan’s short-comings as an activist for the African American community, what most fans and the league cared most about was seeing him and his team become NBA Champions.

The biggest rivals to the Bulls were the “Bad Boy Pistons”.  Even worse was the fact that the “perceived” image the Pistons projected, continued to sully the post-racial image Michael Jordan and the league worked so hard to cultivate.

“Todd Boyd, University of Southern California professor of media studies, a native Detroiter and longtime Pistons fans, the Bad Boys were perceived nationally, as a Black team, even though Bill Laimbeer, the team’s most despised agitator - the Rush Limbaugh of basketball - was white”.

- Johnny Smith (p.134) 

I became familiar with Dr. Todd Boyd and his work, thanks to his appearance on The Last Dance docuseries on the 1990s Chicago Bulls.  I couldn’t find a short clip of Dr. Boyd on YouTube in the documentary. But, I did find this interesting “short”, where Dr. Boyd makes a reference to how a talented basketball player would be good in any era.

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In reading JUMPMAN, I learned a lot about the business practices of Bulls Owner Jerry Reinsdorf.

There’s also a chapter on the Bulls talented, yet incorrigible General Manager Jerry Krause, titled “Crumbs”. Some of the stories in that chapter are simply ROTFLMAO, funny!

While, I loved the 2020 docuseries on Michael Jordan and the Bulls, JUMPMAN humanizes Michael Jordan in a way that the Last Dance Documentary wasn’t able to. Yet, the book also adds to the mythology of him, as well.

Just as we all thought the story of Michael Jordan has already been written, here comes this book piecing together a single narrative from a truck-sized anthology of other chroniclers of Michael Jordan.

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The remainder of this post is primarily a curation of all the endnotes I found most interesting after each chapter. It was a tedious task for sure. But, I am that curious to have a running record of incredible Michael Jordan stories. And this is why I liked the book so much.

As my regular readers already know, most of my posts are not behind a paywall. They are after all a labor of love. But, this list I curated is unfair to the author for me to just give away.

You can of course access all these endnotes on your own by buying JUMPMAN online or at your local book-store.  You can also read a full excerpt of the JUMPMAN book - RIGHT HERE!

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Before you cross the paywall, check out this interview the JUMPMAN author gave to Justin Goodrum and Matt Thomas of the Hoopsology Podcast.