Michael Jordan: The NBA legend who did not draft his college-basketball-playing son

While LeBron James reportedly loomed large in the Lakers' decision to draft his son Bronny, there was never speculation around Michael Jordan drafting his productive college basketball player of a son

The second round of the NBA Draft is a largely forgettable event that’s perhaps best known for future three-time league MVP Nikola Jokic being selected in the middle of a commercial for the Taco Bell quesarito in 2014, but this year, it came with a little extra intrigue.

With the No. 55 overall and fourth-to-last selection of the 2024 NBA Draft on Thursday, the Los Angeles Lakers took USC freshman guard Bronny James, the oldest son of Lakers superstar and future hall-of-famer LeBron James.

The pick had been forecast for months, if not years, with those who cover the draft most extensively effectively saying outright that it was going to happen. The elder James told The Athletic in 2022 that as his 40th birthday inched closer, he was holding out to play with his son, who, at that point, was still a high-schooler.

“Wherever Bronny is at, that’s where I’ll be,” he said to the outlet. “I would do whatever it takes to play with my son for one year. It’s not about the money at that point.”

James and his associates later distanced themselves from the idea, but by then, it had not only been firmly planted, but it spread uncontrollably. In a draft noticeably lacking in top-tier talent, a player who averaged 4.8 points per game for a 15-18 team last season became the most breathlessly discussed prospect.

As many of these kinds of stories do, it has taken on a life of its own, becoming steady debate-show and page-view fodder and made a lightning rod of a 19-year-old who, by all accounts, is a hard-working, mature young man who very well could have developed into an all-conference-caliber player by his third or fourth year in college (it’s important to note that what would be his lone college season was thrown into flux last summer when he suffered cardiac arrest caused by congenital heart defect, which ultimately sidelined him for the first month of the season).

Though we’ve never quite seen it with someone who’s, at worst, one of the top five players in his sport’s history, the notion of a father playing at the highest level of the professional ranks with his son isn’t entirely foreign. Gordy Howe, by then in his 50s, played for the Hartford Whalers with his sons, Mark and Marty, during the 1979-80 season. In baseball, Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr. patrolled the outfield together for the Seattle Mariners for parts of two seasons while Tim Raines Sr. and Tim Raines Jr. suited up together briefly for the Baltimore Orioles.

In the NBA, however, this is truly a first, assuming Bronny ends up logging at least one actual NBA minute with the Lakers (given who his dad is, it seems like a safe enough bet).

Mostly, though, Thursday’s news and the months of speculation preceding it got me thinking of another NBA legend and his college basketball player of a son – one who was never the subject of the same kind of rumors about a reunion in the NBA with his father.

Marcus Jordan’s college basketball odyssey

The man who’s as close to a peer as James has had for much of his NBA career – despite playing his final game two months before James entered the league – also had children who played basketball.

Michael Jordan, still widely considered the best basketball player of all-time, had an eldest son, Jeffrey, who played college basketball, first as a walk-on at Illinois before finishing up his career at UCF. With a career average of 1.6 points per game, though, he was never remotely considered as a viable NBA prospect.

Instead, it’s Jeffrey’s younger brother, Marcus, who will be the focus of today’s newsletter.

At Whitney Young High School in Chicago, Marcus Jordan was a player who garnered attention and earned accolades for reasons beyond his last name. Listed at 6-foot-3 and 205 pounds by his final collegiate season, Jordan led his team to an Illinois state title and was named the tournament’s MVP after scoring a game-high 19 points in the championship game. The spring of his senior season, he took part in the Jordan Brand Classic, one of the top high school all-star games in the country that featured the younger Jordan for obvious reasons.

A three-star recruit rated by 247Sports as the No. 286 prospect nationally in the 2009 class, he committed to UCF, joining a program where former high school teammate A.J. Rompza was already on the roster and where fellow Chicago-area player and top-150 recruit Nik Garcia committed the same day as Jordan.

“UCF is an up-and-coming school and we want to help take it to the next level,” Garcia told the Orlando Sentinel at the time of their verbal pledge in April 2009.

Understandably, the news generated headlines beyond just Orlando, with the son of the most iconic player in the sport’s history taking his talents to a Conference USA program that had never been better than a No. 14 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Once there, it didn’t take long for Jordan to attract more national attention.