Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan's NBA career took a turn upon his first retirement after the murder of his father, leaving many saddened by the whole situation.
Former Bulls teammate Steve Kerr still remembers reading the words “I'm Back” in a press release on March 18, 1995, but even before that legendary moment, Jordan was frequenting the Bulls' practice facility and schooling players for breakfast. Kerr and Bill Wennington remembered the scene:
“He was in Phil’s office and we were all asking the guys who knew him, like B.J. Armstrong, ‘What’s going on?,’ said Armstrong, according to Michael Lee and David Aldridge of The Athletic. ‘I don’t know. He might be thinking about coming back.’ It was like, ‘Wow.’ ”
“We thought, ‘Oh, he’s just knocking off the rust, he misses it.’ But he practiced with us three days in a row,” said another teammate, Bill Wennington. “I think after the second day, I told Steve, ‘I think something’s going on for real.’ One, he was there three days in a row. Two, he was going hard, whereas before he was just kind of fooling around. He was going full practice for us, but nobody wanted to say anything because no one wanted to jinx it and no one wanted to let the cat out of the bag. I think after the fourth day, Phil or somebody said, ‘Keep it under your hat, but, yeah.’ ”
The formal announcement was something some of the Bulls already expected, but all the more surreal to hear it and even more so to see it come to fruition. It was a game-changer for Chicago:
“That next season just felt like the wind was out of our sails, so when he announced he was coming back, it changed everything,” Kerr said. “We just got injected with new life and new opportunity.”
Jordan played only 17 games in that 1994-95 season, but his next three seasons with the Bulls is the stuff legends are made of — playing in every game of that second three-peat to elevate his status into one of the gods of the sport.
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