Well here goes, I’ll go ahead and put it out there.
It’s a conspiracy website and message board. Very entertaining.
You can post links. You just can’t post links with the intention to send people over to wage a battle of the minds. (“Hey everyone! These anti-vaxxers over on this mommyboard are crazy! Let’s go screw with them.”)
Thanks, good to know.
The theory is that he was suspended for his gambling issues, but that everyone wanted to keep it hush-hush. Stern, because it would have been too controversial to suspend the face of the league at the height of his career, when he was winning championships; and MJ, because it would have harmed his image (don’t forget, he was one of the biggest advertising whores of all time).
As to the specific claim that he was supposed to throw the series against the Knicks in the 93 playoffs, he shot 37% from the field in the first two games, both losses, and was 3-18 from the field in Game 3, which the Bulls somehow won by 20 (Jordan was 16-17 from the FT line). In Game 4 he snapped out of his funk and went for 54 on 60% shooting.
So he definitely played lousy for the first three games of the series. He had a triple-double in Game 5 in NY. Game 6 he only shot 33%, but John Starks had 8 turnovers and the Bulls closed out the series. So as conspiracy theories go, there’s just enough there to make it seem fishy, but I think it overlooks the fact that the Knicks were the best defensive team in the league that year, and that they could get away with a lot more in terms of hard fouls and hand checking than you can today, and it’s completely unsurprising that they would key on Jordan during the series.
I don’t think its been linked to yet, so here’s Cracked.com’s take on the Michael Jordan thing. It’s in a list of famous sports moments that all might have been fake. Although it’s an over-the-top humor site their articles are well written and some of the things in the list sound plausible…