NBAWeird But True

Apparently Michael Jordan Has Been A Bad Friend To His High School Coach

Michael Jordan is a wealthy man. His high school basketball coach Pop Herring is not. In fact, Pop isn’t just poor — he’s flat broke, mentally ill, an alcoholic and was recently housed a man who was charged with killing a woman and burying her in Pop’s yard. It could be because MJ is still bitter about being cut from varsity his sophomore year, but he hasn’t spoken to his high school coach in 18 years. This made Sports Illustrated’s Thomas Lake very upset.

Lake recently bailed Pop out of jail (he was unaffiliated with the crime, just drunk and disorderly when the police showed up and spent 24 days in prison), which prompted him to write an open letter calling MJ out for not helping his sick, wayward high school hoops coach. It does not look good on Michael. But it doesn’t really look great on Thomas Lake either.

Allegedly, Michael hasn’t seen his coach since 1994. Pop hasn’t been totally absent in MJ’s life however — he made an appearance in his Hall of Fame speech three years ago where Michael said, “I wanted to make sure you understood: You made a mistake, dude.” That’s about it though.

To sum up Lake’s point very succinctly: Michael Jordan is a very wealthy man who lives too comfortably. Pop Herring has lost his family and livelihood due to mental illness. Michael should lend a hand. He offers solutions as grand as hiring Pop full-time caretakers and as small as giving him a nice pair of shoes.

Listen Thomas, obviously we’d like to think MJ would lend a hand to an old coach. We’d like for him to lend a hand to all of us, because he probably could, but perhaps this letter is just a byproduct of your attachment to the feature you wrote on Pop back in January. You can fault MJ for a whole ton of things, and it would be plenty heartwarming if he assisted a man in need, but the two have been estranged for a long time and this man isn’t necessarily Michael’s obligation.

[Sports Illustrated]