‘I Had Nothing to Do with This Man Losing His Life’: Judge Petitions to Free Convicted Killer in Michael Jordan’s Father’s Murder, Reopening the Scandal That Shattered the NBA Legend and Forced Him Off the Court to Play Baseball

It’s a picture as iconic as any taken of Michael Jordan, showing a side of the retired basketball legend seldom seen. He’d just won his first NBA title and is clearly spent, overwhelmed by emotion as he holds the championship trophy that had eluded him for nearly a decade. As Jordan cradles the hardware, a familiar figure holds the Bulls superstar, a man who’d been by his side from the beginning: His father, James Jordan. “I always felt, if he’d had to play that whole season for free to get to the mountaintop, he would have,” recalled the NBA’s official photographer, Andrew Bernstein, in an NBA.com interview ahead of receiving the Curt Gowdy Media Award in 2018. “I knew this was a special moment. I banged a couple of frames really quick.” The elder Jordan’s murder in July 1993 impacted his son greatly, changing the course of his career in ways no one could’ve predicted. Two 18-year-old men were convicted of killing James Jordan. Police said James Jordan had pulled over on a highway to sleep in the red Lexus given to him by his son after leading the Bulls to a third consecutive title when he was shot in...