How Michael Jordan’s path to greatness was shaped by race, politics, and the consequences of fame

To become the most revered basketball player in America, it wasn’t enough for Michael Jordan to merely excel on the court. He also had to become something he never intended: a hero.

Reconstructing the defining moment of Jordan’s career—winning his first NBA championship during the 1990-1991 season—sports historian Johnny Smith examines Jordan’s ubiquitous rise in American culture and the burden he carried as a national symbol of racial progress. Jumpman reveals how Jordan maintained a “mystique” that allowed him to seem more likable to Americans who wanted to believe race no longer mattered. In the process of achieving greatness, he remade himself into a paradox: universally known, yet distant and unknowable.

Blending dramatic game action with grand evocations of the social forces sweeping the early nineties, Jumpman demonstrates how the man and the myth together created the legend we remember today.

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“Other Michael Jordan books have shown the whats and wheres and whys. Now Jumpman, an essential addition to the canon, explains what it all cost.”
Wright Thompson, senior writer, ESPN.com
“In Jumpman, author Johnny Smith distills the mythology of a sports legend and gives us a story not only about His Airness, but, more broadly, about America.”
Gary M. Pomerantz, author of The Last Pass
“Jumpman is a thought-provoking portrait of the 1990s culture that shaped Michael Jordan into one of the most talked-about athletes the world has ever known. Thanks to Smith for shedding new light on the man, the myth, the legend—the GOAT.”
Timothy Bella, author of Barkley
“Through careful research and rich storytelling, Jumpman does more than just unpack the mystique of Michael Jordan; it paints a lively and unvarnished portrait of the players and personalities who defined that era of professional basketball. By centering questions of race and examining the shifting business of sport, Smith also provides us with a provocative parable about US culture and politics in the late-twentieth century: a time when colorblindness, conservativism, and neoliberal global capitalism came to reshape the American Dream.”
Theresa Runstedtler, author of Black Ball

Johnny Smith

About the Author

Johnny Smith is the J.C. “Bud” Shaw Professor of Sports History at Georgia Tech. He is the author of Jumpman, and co-author of The Fight of His Life, War Fever, A Season in the Sun, and Blood Brothers. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

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October 5 2023

Basketball Legends Q&A (Authors discuss Lebron and MJ)

Authors of THE BOOK OF JAMES and JUMPMAN share more about their process and expectations for their books.

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Basketball Legends Q&A (Authors discuss Lebron and MJ)

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