Heir Jordan

From March 2007: He has weathered the pressure of being Michael Jordan's son and managed to build a strong high-school record. Now Jeffrey Jordan has his sights set on college hoops.

By Noah Isackson

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In seventh grade, Jordan attended an AAU tournament in Virginia with the Rising Stars. Hundreds of fans, talent scouts, and sports reporters from across the country descended on a small court that, on any other day, would have drawn only a dozen or so parents. Michael Jordan sat in the front row directly across from the Rising Stars' bench.

During the game, the ball trickled out of bounds in the NBA star's general direction. Seizing the moment, one of the players on the opposing team dove toward the sidelines. The attempt wasn't to save the ball, but to make good on a chance to dive into the lap of a legend.

The stunt was innocent enough, and people laughed. But, to some, it signaled the end of Jeff's blissful anonymity. "You had to feel badly for the kid," recalls scout Dave Telep, who was there. "You had to wonder how it affected him." Telep and others assumed that Jeff would be traumatized and, say, switch to football in a matter of days. But Jeff says that well before that lap-diving episode, he had conditioned himself to block out the buzz that surrounds him. On that particular day, he didn't see the dive. "Honestly, I don't pay attention to anything around my dad unless I hear his voice," he says.

Strange as it may seem, the basketball court would become the one place where being Michael Jordan's son didn't bother Jeff. He continued to play in junior-high AAU tournaments around the country and progressed to invitation-only basketball camps, even a frighteningly symbolic showcase at the University of North Carolina, his father's alma mater.

"I've never tried to encourage him in either direction," Juanita Jordan says. "Michael and I have always supported what he wanted to do and primarily it's been basketball." Still, the camp at Chapel Hill sticks out as an especially difficult moment, she says. "I thought that might be a lot of pressure. I just thought that it would raise questions about his college career and all sorts of other comparisons. But it was a great experience for him."

Today, Jordan looks back on those years as a sort of honeymoon. The "pressure of the name" wouldn't reach its full force until he entered Loyola Academy.

As a freshman playing on the sophomore team, Jordan, now wearing number 32, entered his first varsity game with minutes to go in the fourth quarter. Loyola was losing badly, and fans were chanting "overrated" every time he touched the ball. "That was shocking because I didn't think people knew who I was," he recalls. At other games, fans wore his father's old jersey and screamed, "You're not him!" Some would go so far as to mimic the old Gatorade ads and sing, "If I could be like Mike. If I could be like Mike."

On the court, Jordan became a target for unusually hard fouls and players with something to prove. Every player wanted to score on a Jordan and, if he couldn't do that, at least to foul him hard. "He's never complained," says Joey Suhey, a Loyola Academy teammate. "He just pops right back up and walks to the free-throw line." (Suhey's father, Matt, was Walter Payton's longtime blocker; he played on the 1985 Chicago Bears Super Bowl team.)

The summer between his sophomore and junior years, the Nike All-American Camp in Indianapolis invited Jordan to an event where top college prospects show their skills to dozens of college coaches and scouts. During the week, the players attend media-training classes, which culminate with each player having his own news conference. Most athletes walk in to find no more than a handful of reporters, typically someone from their local paper or a recruiting Web site.

Jeff Jordan, on the other hand, walked into a conference room filled with several dozen reporters and, he recalls, "40 or 50" TV cameras. Later, he was ushered into a dimly lit suite so he could be interviewed by ESPN. "I was nervous," he recalls. "But whatever [they] asked me, I pretty much tried to keep my dad out of the answers because I didn't want that to be used against me in any way." A reporter from Japan even called his hotel room requesting an interview.

On almost every court, Jordan was judged more harshly than most. "The toughest thing for scouts was trying to understand who Jeff was, versus the player that everyone thought Michael Jordan's son should be," says Jerry Meyer, a scout with the recruiting site Rivals.com. "I certainly had to fight that."

"I think it could have hurt my recruiting more than it helped, just having the name," Jordan says. "The only thing I can do is work harder, and that's also what's going to fuel me in college. Just thinking about what could have happened if I didn't have my name."

Making matters even more difficult for the high schooler, other scouts say, was the fact that some college coaches were reluctant to recruit him. Apparently, they were intimidated by the very idea of dealing with "a Jordan"—and the father, family, and bubble that surround him.

Today, scouts say all of it conspired against Jordan so that he was "undervalued," an issue that the teen seems keenly aware of. "I think it could have hurt my recruiting more than it helped, just having the name," Jordan says. "It ticks me off sometimes, just because I know there's nothing I can really do about it. It's a coach's decision to either call you or not call you. The only thing I can do is work harder, and that's also what's going to fuel me in college. Just thinking about what could have happened if I didn't have my name. I think that's going to be a big factor in my improvement over the next four years."

The game at the Gentile Center ends with Loyola defeating New Trier 60 to 55, with 21 of Loyola's points coming from Jeff Jordan, who has led all scorers. Fans stream toward the exits, ignoring a second contest pitting number-one-ranked Simeon High School, one of the better teams in the country, against Carver Military Academy. Meanwhile, the 18-year-old submits to the inevitable postgame interviews.

Standing just a few steps from the court, the senior looks tired but characteristically composed. He leans toward a TV microphone and answers each question with a fairly succinct sound bite. There's a question about his two-handed dunk (his favorite move), then one about the pressure of playing in front of his father (Jordan is expecting Dad to give him a postgame "critique"), and something related to his team ("If we keep taking it game by game, we'll be all right"). Then comes a question that gets to the heart of the matter:

"Do you ever smile?" the TV reporter asks. "It wasn't until the last five seconds of the game that I saw you smile."

Jordan chuckles. For most of the game, his facial expression had ranged from furious to serious. The intensity of the action demanded it, of course, but Jordan is also a Jordan. He has to think twice before showing emotion. In public, at least, he has to think twice about almost everything.

"Yeah, yeah, I definitely smile," Jordan says with a grin. "I love playing in front of the fans and everything like that. So, at the end of the game, when I knew we had it wrapped up, I was happy." The interview ends, and the smile disappears. He shakes the reporter's hand, turns toward the exit, and walks to the locker room.