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The legend of Michael Jordan as a degenerate gambler continues.
Months after ESPN’s docuseries “The Last Dance” shed some light on how the six-time NBA champion’s extreme competitive drive extended off the court, former NBA player Antoine Walker added another story about Jordan’s gambling to the lexicon.
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Walker, who played 13 seasons in the NBA from 1996 to 2008, went on the “All Things Covered” podcast and described an experience he had with Jordan in the ’90s. According to Walker, the two once played spades at a restaurant – for 36 straight hours. And it was not for chump change, either.
“When Mike calls, the buy-in goes up a little higher. It’s going to be a number that everybody has to bring to the table,” Walker, who filed for bankruptcy in 2010 after flushing $108 million in NBA earnings, said on the podcast.
“I’d say $20,000 just to get in. If you don’t have $20,000 to get in, you can’t even play. Mike was competitive. I remember one time we played spades for 36 hours. We were playing against two other guys and Mike and I were partners. They had us behind $900,000.
“And what made it even more crazy is that it was the day he was supposed to make his announcement that he was officially come back. We played for 36 hours man.”
That is when he revealed that he was returning to the Chicago Bulls from minor league baseball.
As if it couldn’t be more crazy.
But that wasn’t it as they weren’t just marking down what was owed, they had the cash in the room.
And Jordan allegedly sent his nephew to retrieve $500,000 out of a golf bag during the game.
“I was leaving for Boston in a couple of days so I had about $100,000 cash,” Walker said. “I was always a cash person. MJ had about $200,000 on him, but he sent for $500,000. The other guys we played against had money too. They had us down $900,000 and we got back all the money except for $20,000. Mike did not want to see them win $20,000. They ended up winning $180,000 because he got too tired. He was falling asleep at the table.”
Gambling was discussed in The Last Dance with Jordan called out for saying he had a competition problem rather than a gambling problem.
It was on show in a scene where Jordan lost $20 in a competition with a security guard, where they flipped coins at a wall.
There have been several stories on Jordan’s legendary competitiveness, including Charles Barkley telling Rob Lowe’s Literally Podcast about how he played 36-holes of golf before destroying Puerto Rico in the 1992 Tournament of the Americas and actor Anthony Anderson told Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend about the time Jordan gave him the silent treatment after beating him at dominoes.
This story first appeared in the New York Post and was republished with permission.
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