LeBron Speaking Out On Deaths Of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery See Him Stand Up Where Michael Jordan Would Not

Not only was the average ESPN audience of nearly six million folks reminded throughout “The Last Dance” that Michael Jordan could play a little basketball, and that he owns a highly competitive spirit, and that he can’t stand a bunch of people, but that you wouldn’t want this guy in your foxhole.

Jordan mostly cared about Jordan along the way to six NBA championships and eternal fame with the Chicago Bulls as somebody that Forbes.com says has made more than $1 billion.

And that’s just from Nike NKE .

Actually, to hear Jordan tell it, he got most of his loot from a combination of those sportswear people and keeping his mouth shut.

"I do commend Muhammad Ali for standing up for what he believed in, but I never thought of myself as an activist,” Jordan said during the documentary. “I thought of myself as a basketball player. I wasn't a politician when I was playing my sport. Was that selfish? Probably. But that was my energy.

“That's where my energy was.”

Yeah, well. Thank goodness, when it comes to social injustice, LeBron James is the anti-Jordan, especially in times like these.

Just this month, a white father-and-son tandem was arrested and charged with murder for killing Ahmaud Arbery while the 25-year-old African American jogged last February in Brunswick, Ga.

Then came Monday in Minneapolis, where a police officer contributed to the death of George Floyd by kneeling on the neck of the handcuffed African American for almost 10 minutes (”I can’t breathe, Floyd said, sounding like Eric Garner of six years ago in New York) as three other cops watched nearby.

While Jordan hasn’t said anything about Arbery or Floyd since he still has sneakers to sell, James responded to both atrocities.

Good.

So these post-“The Last Dance” comparisons between the careers of Jordan and James are wrongheaded. They shouldn’t involve what two of the greatest NBA players did on the court (different styles during polar-opposite eras), but why Jordan doesn’t get it, and why James does.

Let’s start with James, the world’s eighth-highest-paid athlete last year at $89 million, according to Forbes. It also says this perennial all-star for the Los Angeles Lakers, following two stops with the Cleveland Cavaliers and another with the Miami Heat, has the NBA’s top endorsement portfolio as a complement to his own production company and media operation.

In addition, James runs a health and wellness company with Cindy Crawford, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lindsey Vonn. He also joins others in owning 14 Blaze Pizza franchises in Chicago and seven in South Florida around operating his own public elementary school back home in Akron, Ohio.

None of that has muzzled James.

As the most visible player in today’s NBA, LeBron has used his status to do things such as organize a group photo in March 2012 with pal Dwyane Wade and the rest of their Heat teammates wearing hoodies. They resembled the one of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old African American gunned down by George Zimmerman in a neighborhood of Sanford, Florida.

Four years later, James was loud and constant in support for Colin Kaepernick, when the African American quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers took a knee during the national anthem in protest of social injustice.

Since the days of Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell and Arthur Ashe, no mega athlete has been more firm in his convictions than James.

Jordan?

Well, which is the real Jordan?

He went decades staying silent on whether he uttered the words, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.” He supposedly said such a thing as his reason for not publicly supporting Democrat and African American challenger Harvey Gantt against incumbent Republican and noted segregationist Jesse Helms in the 1990 U. S. Senate race in Jordan’s native North Carolina.

During “The Last Dance,” Jordan confessed.

Sort of.

"I don't think that statement (about Republicans and sneakers) needs to be corrected, because I said it in jest on a bus with Scottie Pippen,” Jordan said on documentary. "It was thrown off the cuff. My mother asked to do a PSA for Harvey Gantt, and I said, 'Look, Mom, I'm not speaking out of pocket about someone that I don't know. But I will send a contribution to support him.' Which is what I did.”

Uh-huh. Just like Jordan claimed during the documentary he wasn’t involved with the banishment of Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas from the Dream Team for the 1992 Summer Olympics.

The thing is, an audio recording from 2011 surfaced this week with Jordan telling sports journalist Jack McCallum, “(Former NBA executive) Rod Thorn called me. I said, ‘Rod, I won’t play if Isiah Thomas is on the team.’ He assured me. He said, ‘You know what? [Coach] Chuck [Daly] doesn’t want Isiah. So Isiah is not going to be part of the team.’”

Speaking of Thomas . . .

Just saying.