It was late in the NBA regular season, 1996, and the Chicago Bulls were rolling, their triangle offense humming and their confidence sky-high. The playoffs loomed, and the team was in Miami, prepping for a game against the Heat—a team they’d likely see again in the first round.
For the Bulls, shootaround was routine. The players stretched, ran drills, and shot jumpers in the echoing emptiness of Miami Arena. Among them was Michael Jordan, the legend himself, who moved through the motions with his trademark intensity and focus. For the rest of the league, Jordan was a mythic figure—part machine, part magician, all competitor. But for his teammates, he was also just “MJ,” a guy with quirks, humor, and habits that rarely made the headlines.
Craig Hodges, a sharpshooter and Jordan’s teammate, remembers that day vividly. “We were finishing up shootaround, and everybody was thinking about the game, about playoffs, about what was at stake,” he later recalled. “But Mike? Mike was thinking about something else.”
As the Bulls filed onto the team bus, Jordan lingered behind. “Man, drop me off here,” he told the driver, gesturing toward a nondescript bar tucked between palm trees and neon signs on the sun-bleached Miami street.
Hodges and the rest of the team exchanged glances. “You sure, MJ?” someone asked.
Jordan grinned. “Yeah, I’m just gonna have a couple beers. Pick me up on the way back to the arena.”
The bus rumbled away, leaving the greatest basketball player in the world, hours before tipoff, standing outside a bar in his sweats. The rest of the Bulls went back to their hotel, some shaking their heads, some laughing. This was vintage Mike—unpredictable, supremely confident, and entirely his own man.
When the bus returned to collect him, Jordan was waiting outside, still in his warm-ups, looking relaxed and—if you got close enough—smelling faintly of hops and barley. He climbed aboard, smiling wider than ever.
“Y’all ready?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.
Craig Hodges would never forget the next few hours. “He was loose, man. He was feeling good. He gets to the arena, still in his sweats, and you could smell the beer on him. But when the game started? Man, let me tell you, Mike had 30 points by halftime.”
Jordan’s performance that night was classic: fadeaways, drives, dunks, and jumpers. The crowd roared as he carved through Miami’s defense, seemingly playing at a different speed than everyone else. At one point, he joked to his teammates, “I’m seeing three rims—just shoot for the one in the middle.”
He was unstoppable, and by the third quarter, the Bulls had built such a lead that Jordan sat out the rest of the game, towel draped over his shoulders, grinning at the bench. The Bulls won easily.
After the game, the locker room was buzzing. “That’s why he’s the GOAT,” someone said. “He can do what nobody else can do, on and off the court.”
But for Hodges, the story wasn’t just about Jordan’s superhuman ability to dominate after a few beers. It was about the real MJ, the man behind the myth. “People always talk about Mike’s competitiveness, his killer instinct,” Hodges explained. “But what a lot of fans don’t see is the guy who could be loose, who could laugh, who could step into a bar before a game and then go out and torch you for 30.”
There was a lesson in that, Hodges thought. The media loved to portray Jordan as a relentless, joyless competitor, a man obsessed with winning at all costs. But the reality was more complicated. Jordan’s greatness came not just from his work ethic or his will to win, but from his ability to be himself—unapologetically, fearlessly, whether he was in a suit or sweats, on the court or at a bar.
The Bulls’ success that season wasn’t just about talent or tactics. It was about chemistry, about knowing when to be serious and when to be loose. “Systems win championships,” Hodges would say. “But you need personalities, too. You need leaders who know how to keep it light, keep it real.”
Jordan’s bar adventure became a kind of legend among his teammates, a story told and retold whenever someone needed a reminder that greatness isn’t always about following the script. Sometimes it’s about trusting your routine—no matter how unorthodox—and then delivering when it matters most.
Years later, as new stars rose and the media scrutinized every off-court move, Hodges would think back to that night in Miami. He’d hear stories about young players criticized for their nightlife, for not fitting the mold of the “perfect professional.” He’d shake his head.
“They talk about guys today, about what they do off the court,” he’d say. “But if you knew what we were doing—and still going out there and being professionals—you’d understand that it ain’t about what you do before the game. It’s about what you do when the lights come on.”
For Michael Jordan, the lights had always been brightest on the court. But in the shadows, in the quiet moments before the world was watching, he was just Mike—a man who could step into a bar, share a laugh, and then remind everyone why he was the greatest to ever play the game.
And for those who were there, the story wasn’t about beer or bravado. It was about confidence, authenticity, and the joy of the game. It was about a team that trusted each other, and a superstar who, even at his most relaxed, could turn a night in Miami into another chapter of basketball legend.
That was the real Michael Jordan: not just a competitor, but a man who lived fully—on his own terms, every single day.
