Michael Jordan was elected the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century in 1999 by the sports television channel ESPN. Over the years he has gained much fame on the court which has made him an icon of the sport, to the point of pushing Nike to dedicate a line of basketball shoes to him called Air Jordan, introduced in 1984.

Born in 1963, he played for three years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he led the team to a NCAA national championship in 1982. He was then drafted third in the 1984 NBA Draft by the Chicago Bulls and quickly became one of the stars of the league, helping to spread the NBA globally in the 80s and 90s.

In 1991 he won his first NBA title with the Bulls, then repeated with two more successes in 1992 and 1993, winning a three-peat, after which he retired to pursue a career in baseball. He returned to the Bulls in 1995 and led them to another three-peat victory (1996, 1997 and 1998). He retired a second time in 1999, then returned as a member of the Washington Wizards from 2001 to 2003, before retiring permanently.

Individual honors include six Finals MVP, ten leading scorer titles, five regular season MVP, ten All-NBA First Team and nine All-Defensive First Team selections, fourteen NBA All-Star Game appearances , three All-Star Game MVPs and an NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. He holds the NBA records for the highest points average in regular season history and playoff history.

He became a member of the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2015. On November 22, 2016, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President Barack Obama, the highest US civilian award.