Exactly 20 years ago today, Michael Jordan shocked the sports world by announcing that he was making a return to the Chicago Bulls less than two years after retiring from the NBA to pursue a baseball career. But do you know what shocked us most about his announcement? The way he went about doing it.
Back in 1995, the Internet as we know it today didn't exist. There was no Facebook. No Twitter. And no such thing as "social media." So when MJ made his announcement, he did it by having his agent David Falk send a fax out to a bunch of newspapers and magazines. The press release was very short and, for Bulls fans, very sweet:
Before long, those two words were splashed across the front of every newspaper in the nation, and they even appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated:
It made for quite the comeback story.
Even so, we can't help but wonder how MJ's return would have played out if he'd made it in 2015 as opposed to 1995. Something tells us that it would have gone down much, much differently. So on the 20th anniversary of his comeback, we decided to take a look at how we think "I'm back" would have been received in the Internet age. Check out how the day probably would have went.
4:23 a.m.: TMZ Sports posts photos of MJ having dinner with Phil Jackson in Chicago.
6:12 a.m.: Twitter FREAKS OUT. Every single trending topic has something to do with MJ.
7:41 a.m.: There it is! Yahoo! Sports reporter Adrian Wojnarowski drops the official MJ #wojbomb.
9:13 a.m.: Lines begin forming outside of stores all over the country after a rumor starts about a new Air Jordan sneaker.
10:02 a.m.: Skip Bayless isn't impressed. He opens ESPN First Take by questioning MJ's commitment to the Bulls.
Skip isn't convinced that MJ's heart is really in basketball. Maybe he's just coming back for the money, he says. It leaves Stephen A. Smith looking like this:
11:47 a.m.: Media Take Out publishes a story about how MJ was actually serving a suspension for gambling during his "retirement."
12:23 p.m.: The Bulls upload a photo of a No. 45 jersey to Instagram.
1:10 p.m.: Complex Sports puts up a list of Knicks fans sending death threats to MJ on Twitter.
2:12 p.m.: A video of a Birmingham Barons fan burning his MJ baseball jersey makes its way to YouTube.
3:07 p.m.: The Internet is flooded with think pieces about MJ's return.
4:00 p.m.: The time has finally arrived. The NBA releases a story called "I'm..." written by MJ on their website.
But no one actually gets to read it. NBA.com goes down immediately after the @NBA Twitter account sends out a link to the story. Twitter is next. Then Facebook. And Instagram. And yo, MySpace, too?!
INTERNET DOWN.
4:30 p.m.: Chris Broussard confirms that MJ is coming back…by fax.
The Internet is broken. But fortunately, Broussard's fax machine isn't. So half an hour after MJ was supposed to make his big announcement, the ESPN reporter receives this and shares it with the world:
And for at least a second, 2015 isn't so different from 1995 after all. Now how do we #FixTheInternet?
