Transcripts:
Hey everybody, uh, welcome to another episode of the podcast. In light of the NBA arrest today, thought I'd go back in time and talk about one that was covered up by the NBA much the same way as Major League Baseball is covering up everything that Show Hutani did. And I had this blind item back January 3rd, 2020, revealed at February 1st, 2020.
This now deceased guy was like the Jay Edgar Hoover of sports. The secrets he kept are huge, but the one everyone wants is the deal he made with a permanent A++ list athlete to take a break for a couple of years after the gambling scandal that could have taken down the sport for all time. And that's David Stern and Michael Jordan.
And like I said, I revealed it on February 1st. And that same day, a few hours later, I got a DM from somebody, I'm not going to identify, but who you can see the screenshot of it here, but somebody who is so deeply involved with the NBA that they know everything that goes on in the NBA says, "I'm 97% convinced that MJ bet on a few of his own games to get out of gambling debts.
Always on the Bulls to win or cover betting on himself. Basically, he was so competitive and such a degenerate gambler that it makes sense. It does make sense. And let's go back in time to October of 1992. Michael Jordan had his day in court. It lasted 9 minutes. On the witness stand, Jordan admitted he gave James Slim Bowler a cashier's check for $57,000 to cover gambling losses from a weekend of highstakes golf and poker in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
Bowler was on trial in federal court on drug and money laundering charges. A jury considered worthther Bowler, if guilty, should forfeit the 57 grand from Jordan. Jordan was not under federal investigation, had not been tied to any drug activity. He just liked playing with drug dealers. Wearing an olive suit, white shirt, and yellow and black tie, Jordan appeared at the courthouse as a limousine circled the front of the building to draw media away from the entrance.
Accompanied by a three-man entourage, including his father, James, who's very important to the story, Jordan was whisked into a room adjoining the courtroom. Defense attorney James Wyatt, leaning back in his chair with his right leg resting on his left knee, began questioning Jordan by joking, the Bullstar need not list his accomplishment.
Are you the guy in the waties box? Jordan answered, "Yes." Jordan spoke clearly and softly, sometimes trailing off at the end of sentences as he answered questions regarding his relationship with Bowler in the $57,000. Said he had known him for four years, golfed with him eight to 10 times during that period.
He said all the meetings were arranged through a third party. The two wagered from 20 $20 to $1,000 a hold on golf. When Wyatt asked what the 57 grand was for, Jordan answered for a loss gambling on golf and later in poker when he loaned me some money. didn't have any money. So, an illegal poker game. Okay.
Assistant US Attorney Frank Whitney asked Jordan why he originally described the $57,000 as a loan to Bowler for a golf range. It was not represented as a loan at all, Jordan said. It was my immediate reaction to the media after a game to save embarrassment and pain and the connection to gambling. Bowler, who broke down in tears while testifying earlier in the day, sat passively as Jordan testified.
And outside the courtroom, Jordan told reporters, "I said what I had to say. I told the truth." And Jordan's father said his son had nothing to be embarrassed about. Michael's human just like everybody else. What he did in private is not anything to be ashamed of. People are going to make it what they want to. But what people must realize is that he's just like every other guy that walks the street.
There was only one perfect person that I ever heard talked about, and that's God. Michael's not God. And then Jordan said he there's the preseason. This is an October. wasn't gonna make a trip. Then in 1993, the NBA asked Michael Jordan if he was gambling on Chicago Bulls games after they found out he had a $1.2 million gambling debt.
During the 1993 playoffs, Richard Eskinus, a one-time general manager of the San Diego Sports Arena, wrote in his book that Jordan owed him more than $1.2 million in gambling debt. Jordan said, "Richard Esquinus, we met from a third party. I'm actually playing golf with people all the time. Now, if they want to gamble, we gamble.
The character of those individuals, I find out later what kind of people I was playing with. I learned that lesson. But the act of gambling, I didn't do anything wrong. I never bet on games. I only bet on myself and that was golf. Do I like to play blackjack? Yeah, I like playing blackjack.
There's no laws with that. And the league did call me and they asked questions about it and I told them exactly what was happening. Now, let's take a second here because Terry Rosier, one of the people arrested today. The NBA investigated him and whether or not he actually left the game early, you know, to pay off all these, you know, bets and they didn't find any, you know, wrongdoing.
But today, he was arrested because the NBA doesn't investigate things that are going to make them look bad. But Jordan's gambling addiction was a huge topic in the 1993 playoffs. On top of the Eskinus drama, Jordan took a limo from New York to Atlantic City to gamble with his dad the night before the Bulls lost game two of the 93 Eastern Conference Finals against the Knicks.
The New York Times broke the story and Jordan was heavily attacked. Jordan said, "My father said, "Let's get away from New York City. Let's you and I go to Atlantic City. We got a limo. We went and gambled for a couple hours. We came back. Everybody went totally ballistic. Hey, he was in a casino last night. I wasn't late.
We got home by 12:30, 1:00." And after the Bulls won the 1993 NBA Finals against the Phoenix Suns, Jordan's father was tragically killed. Some media members speculated that Jordan's dad was killed because of his son's gambling dad. I think it might have been something like that. It could have been drugs. And Jordan retired from the NBA in 1993, right? He played baseball before returning to basketball near the end of the 199495 season.
A secret suspension, okay, would only really be secret from the public. So, it allowed David Stern to hand down his punishment for Jordan to have real basketball consequences that the rest of the league would have known about it without getting it into the public sphere. That saved both Jordan and the league from the massive public damage, probably tens of billions of dollars that would have come from tainting his legacy.
It also probably worked out really well for both because as a fan in those days, the league started to become boring just to race for second. And that break allowed other stars to shine in the playoffs meant that the interest in Jordan's return was massive. And Jordan keeps that air of invincibility of having never lost at its peak.
And if you doubt the amount of damage that would have come from making it public, just have a look say at the same time kind of thing like Lance Armstrong, the best in his sport. And if you're a Michael Jordan fan, you may know his beloved father James Jordan was killed in North Carolina in 1993. But do you know the whole story? Cuz Michael Jordan's only spoken publicly about it a few times.
The killing sparked international attention, the trial became a national media spectacle, but cameras were not permitted in the courtroom. And there's so much the world doesn't know about the case, and there are plenty of unanswered questions. Now, two teenagers, one Native American, one black, were convicted of the murder of James Jordan, served life sentences in separate North Carolina prisons.
Larry Martin Deere and Daniel Andre Green tell conflicting stories of what happened the night James R. Jordan was murdered. There are new questions about the investigation. New evidence from the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, plus a documented history of law enforcement corruption in this rural county where the murder happened.
Michael Jordan's dad was an unidentified John Doe in a swamp in South Carolina. He was actually cremated before he was identified. Well, how did they identify him then? In August 1993, a fisherman found a body draped over a tree limb in a South Carolina swamp with a gunshot wound to the chest.
With the body badly decomposed, no missing person report matching the description of the dead man. An autopsy was performed. The jaws and hands were preserved for later identification. The man's body was cremated several days later. 2 days after the unidentified body was found in South Carolina, a stripped and vandalized Lexus sports car turned up in the woods more than 60 miles away in North Carolina.
Then the revelations that shocked the world. According to the registration, the car was bought in Chicago by Michael Jordan. And the dead man in South Carolina is later identified as James R. Jordan, Senior, Michael Jordan's dad. Now, for this close relationship that Michael and his dad had, for some reason, James Jordan wasn't reported missing by his family until 3 weeks after he disappeared.
When the Jordan family could not get in touch with Michael's dad, Michael's security team started its own investigation. It wasn't until weeks later after Michael Jordan's car was found vandalized and stripped in the woods near Fagville, North Carolina that the Jordan family filed the missing person report. And Michael Jordan's dad did have a criminal record for his involvement in a kickback scheme and you know involved in organized crime, but the gambling never proven to be factors in the murder.
Michael Jordan's NBA ring was found buried in the yard of one of the suspects. And after his murder, a suspect wore James Jordan's jewelry and a rap music video. I mean, it was crazy. Now, at Daniel Green's trial in 1996, the public heard for the first time the full story of what prosecutors say happened on the side of the road in Lumberton, North Carolina back on July 23rd, 1993.
The state's story places Daniel Andre Green and Larry Martin Demery there trying to rob James Jordan as he slept in his car. In stunning testimony, codefendant Larry Demery told the court he saw James wake up, startling Daniel, who then fired the fatal shot to his chest. Demery testified he and Daniel then drove to South Carolina, dumped James Jordan's body off a bridge, and it just ended up on the tree in a swamp.
Daniel Green had an alibi witness, a girl named Bobby Joe Marillo, but she never testified at his trial. And it's very interesting because the core of Daniel's defense was that he was not there when James Jordan was killed. He says that he only came on the scene later at Larry's insistence and then helped dispose of James Jordan's body.
Daniel Green says he was at a cookout with his mother, his sister, several friends, and a girl he had a romantic interest in. And multiple witnesses corroborated his story. But when the case went to trial, for whatever reason, Daniel's defense didn't spend much time exploring the alibi and only called two witnesses.
The gun evidence was one of the three pillars of the prosecution's case. But at the Daniel Green murder trial, the state was never able to prove that the 38 caliber revolver found was the one used in the James Jordan murder. They couldn't do it. The ballistic test didn't match. The primary narrative of the prosecution's case is that James Jordan was killed in his car and that Demery said he saw Daniel Green shoot and killed James Jordan, but Daniel Green says, "I wasn't there.
" And everybody else corroborated that. The original defense team never conducted bullet trajectory tests to disprove the shooting could have happened. As Demory testified decades later, there were field tests conducted based on the detailed desk the testimony from Deerry about where Daniel was in relation to the car and the bullet trajectory.
Experts said the shooting could not have happened as described by Larry Demery. Now, Mr. Jordan's body was found draped over a tree limb in Gum Swamp near the North Carolina South Carolina border about a mile from Crestline Mobile Homes. He had been in the water for nearly 2 weeks. The coroner concluded he died from a single gunshot wound to the right chest.
The autopsy report states the coroner searched thoroughly for a corresponding bullet hole in the shirt, but it was not there. Three years later, when the shirts entered into evidence at Daniel Green's murder trial, it's presented with a bullet hole in the right chest. The prosecution also presented evidence of gunpowder on the shirt, but the pathologist conducting the autopsy noted none.
The original defense team's handling of the gun evidence, the blood evidence, and the shirt presented at trial are among Daniels Green's claims that he received ineffective assistance of counsel during his trial. Now, one of the first calls made from James Jordan's car phone the day he died was to Hubert Larry De, a convicted drug dealer.
Why is he calling a convicted drug dealer? And also, this drug dealer is the biological son of Robinson County Sheriff Hubert Stone, who investigated the Jordan murder. But the jury never heard about it. The judge did not allow that call to be presented as evidence at the trial, saying there was no known connection between De and Sheriff Stone.
Um, that's the biological son. jurors never heard about that phone call or the relationship between D and the sheriff. The state interviewed De, but there's no record of the interview. It's absolutely bonkers. And there's been a lot of appeals and stuff like that. Now, what about Jordan? It's right after this that he retires, right? What really happened? There was no league investigation.
You know, the league said they were going to investigate, but they really didn't. the the investigation or the announcement of an investigation was only to satisfy the press because they had begun to pry into Michael Jordan's gambling issues. The second Michael Jordan retired. The NBA said, "Oh, we don't need to look into it anymore.
It's done because he's not a member of the NBA, but when he came back a year and a half later, they never brought it up again." It is the same thing as like the show Atani thing. Can you imagine the devastation if Michael Jordan with all the digging that reporters would have done were to be found out betting on Chicago Bulls games or other NBA games.
It would have crushed the league. Nike, the biggest sponsor, would have crushed them. So, what do we do? We make Michael Jordan go away for a little bit. Oh, his dad was murdered, too. That's a great reason we can say, "Oh, he's doing this because his dad always wanted him to play baseball, so that's why he's doing that.
" Okay, you guys, that is it for this one. I will talk to you later.