And like most humans, he ages. I then conservatively plugged in a I also upped his scoring average for this comeback season; assuming that his Again, I was conservative, adding just 2 points to his average. With his three season retirement from to , it became more difficult to estimate his scoring prowess because at 35, 36 and 37 years old, athletes are definitely showing their age.
The good news here is that his Washington Wizards-stint gives us context for his ppg performance. For this calculation, we assumed a decline in points per game We also assumed Jordan would have never been traded had he never chosen to leave the game.
It is an alternate reality after all. Recalculating the points that he scored during the 17 games of his comeback season and adding that to the four full seasons Jordan was away, we come up with the following numbers for and Adding these points to the 31, points he accumulated in his 14 full seasons plugging in our numbers for the season , Michael Jordan would have scored over 41, career points to be exacyt MJ would have retired with 41, total points.
When the eventual discussion of the G. Email Address. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. What if Michael Jordan never retired? In , Jordan's stats take a slight dip. He scores less and shoots less efficiently, the most inefficient full year from the field for him as a Bull. For the sake of argument, let's just assume that Jordan averaged about halfway between his I'll even lowball him a little and say he averaged 25 PPG in that 3-year span.
And, since he's older, let's drop his average number of games per year to Even with these lowered numbers, Jordan would have added a total of 5, points to his total points scored over these three years. This, added to his previous hypothetical total of 33, points now brings him to 39, career points , shattering Kareem's record of 38, If we assume MJ's last two years go the same as they did in real life, we can add his 3, points as a Wizard to the total.
This results in Michael Jordan scoring 42, over the course of this hypothetical career and bringing his scoring average down to about Still not shabby for an year long career. It's interesting to note that these totals still include Jordan's short second year in the league where he was injured he scored points total. If he had played a full year, it isn't impossible to think he could have added another 2, points or more to his hypothetical total.
The other category that Jordan ranks very high is in steals. I'll keep this section a bit shorter, but use the same methodology as I did for scoring. In the three years preceding his retirement, Jordan averaged 2. So if we assume he would have averaged 2. This brings him to 2, career steals and into second place all time. Between, and his Wizard years, MJ's steal numbers only slight dipped.
I think it is reasonable to assume he could have averaged 1. This adds steals to his career total rounding up from Amazingly, this is still 43 steals short of Stockton. In fact, Jordan would have had to have averaged 1. This is a real testament to Stockton's ball hawking skills! The thought of the greatest basketball player retiring right as he was entering his prime was unthinkable to many.
Think about every conspiracy theory out there. Anyone who believes any conspiracy theory probably falls in one of those two groups. While away from basketball, Jordan decided to play baseball. Jordan remained part of a Jerry Reinsdorf-owned organization by playing Double-A ball in the Chicago White Sox farm system for the Birmingham Barons in , and put together a.
In his first full season back, the Bulls began a second three-peat and MJ ended his Bulls career in with six total championships. Many people would have tried to tough it out, and they would have been miserable and probably had their play suffer.
But Jordan was burned out and needed a change, and had the opportunity to leave and be happy with what he was doing. He needed this break from basketball.
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