Michael Jordan's 3-minute appearance

Discussion Open Forum
1

I can’t find any threads about Jordan’s trip here.
From the TV news it seems it he showed up for just three minutes. His fans, many of whom had paid something like 10 grand for a ticket to see their star, were obviously pissed off.
Three minutes! How stingy can you get? The guy was paid millions. Nike, the sponsors, made a bundle too but the fans got dilly squat.

My opinion of His Airness has gone right down. Why couldn’t he have hung out with his fee-paying fans for at least 20 minutes, half an hour, especially considering how much money he is receiving? Sounds like a right %^&*!

2

Well, the aftermath is fans sueing the organizers, trying to organize a boycott of Nike product etc. The media is comparing the 90 seconds on stage with the 20 minutes that HK and China got… Nike is trying to make the whole thing go away by offering merchandise to disgruntled ticket holders.
10k just to see Jordan stroll on stage, slap a few high-fives, say hello and goodbye. Poor fools.

3

It was the worst PR flap of Jordan/Nike’s life. But it happened in Taiwan and the world will never know.

Jason Pan, the best sportswriter at the Taiwan News and maybe in all of Taiwan’s English media, had a good story yesterday, if it is still up:

etaiwannews.com/Taiwan/2004/05/24/1085364863.htm

Jordan’s reported priority on partying upset fans

By Jason Pan

Negative publicity surrounding the “Michael Jordan Show - that never was,” and news of the “His Airness” partying all night with minor celebrities has tarnished the former NBA star’s image and has to some people calling for a boycott of the organizing company’s merchandise products.

Throughout the weekend, speculation mounted of what Jordan did, and did not do, that included reports of his late night activities around town. Disappointed Taiwanese fans cried foul, and demanded Nike Taiwan to explain why Jordan gave fans a total of about 90 seconds in public appearances throughout his entire 23-hour stopover in this country.

Witness reports and contacts from the entertainment industry, appeared in the local press confirmed that Michael Jordan went out late Friday night with a group of male and female minor celebrities for drinks and cigar-puffing at a new trendy VIP pub, the “Mint Bar” at the Taipei 101 Building. Jordan and some of his Taipei female “acquaintances” reportedly returned to his hotel room [________] into Saturday morning.

The news of the world basketball icon’s actions outraged sports fans in Taiwan, with a few calling for a boycott of the Jordan Brand and Nike products. Feeling cheated, they also wanted to take the case to the consumer rights protection agency to file a complaint.

“I have lost all my respect for Michael Jordan. He chose to spend most of his time partying and having a good time at a club, yet he was stingy with his time for the real fans. The whole thing has left us disillusioned with Jordan and his legacy. He is now into big business, just like Nike,” a fan surnamed Yen was quoted as saying yesterday.

“The show on Saturday was like a hip-hop party for a few invited friends of Jordan. They had a good time on stage and off stage, while totally ignoring our feelings. We were forced to shell out thousands of dollars to buy Nike products, in order to get a chance to win a pass to see our idol. Then they made us look like fools with an embarrassing excuse of a show, for supposedly a chance to interact with Jordan. My friends and I are very much disappointed, and we will not buy his brand shoes in the future,” Yen said.

4

Several of my Jr. high school students shelled out some heavy cash to make the long journey from Yangmei to Taipei and were pretty upset with what they saw…

No question, they got ripped off and Michael Jordan couldn’t have damaged his Taiwan image more…

Well, if you’re worth 400millionUS, I guess you don’t have to care too much, but a huge disappointment to his many (ex?) fans…

The whole fiasco was a joke…

5

Question: why does the Chineselanguage media here refer to him at “JOR DAN” all the time, rather than “MICHAEL”? His name is Michael, after all. And Michael is easy to reproduce in Chinese characters…

There were even fans at the airport with signs reading, in English, “Welcome Jordan!” when the signs should have said more politely “Welcome Michael!”

Everyone else here is Jeffrey, Mark, Samantha, Chocolate, David…why does MJ get second class treatment by calling him by his last name? How RUDE!

6

That is why, as a huge sports fan, I have no trouble booing like a madman when a player on a team I support is not performing well. :raspberry:

These guys make a level of $$ that I can only dream about while playing a game that the rest of us love to play for free in our spare time. If a guy is sucking it up on the field, trade or release the bum because you know that most of these high paid athletes are selfish prima donnas who care nothing about the realities of life (of course, there are exceptions). I loved watching Jordan play for the Bulls because he is the greatest baller of all time, but I could care less about him or his company now that he is retired.

I’ll pay a reasonable amount of $$ to watch an athlete perform his or her skill, but there is no way in hell that I would spend NT$1 simply for a chance to cross paths with a “celebrity.” I feel bad for the fans to a certain extent, but they let themselves be played like a fool.

7

These were my sentiments exactly.

However I can’t help feeling sorry for the kids in Taiwan who for once got a chance to see a real world wide superstar on their doorstep. I was probably too judgemental of them getting sucked into the marketing hype because this is opportunity is very rare for them, and Nike certainly misled the fans on their website. Basketball is huge here , I suppose it would be the equivalent to us meeting the entire Man U team back home.

As for Jordan he was probably tired and knows nothing about Taiwan and going through the motions. Not excusable at all but entirely predicatable.
However it shows that this guy sure is a selfish dude.

8

[quote=“headhonchoII”]
However I can’t help feeling sorry for the kids in Taiwan who for once got a chance to see a real world wide superstar on their doorstep.[/quote]

Agreed, I do feel sorry for the kids, seems like they got scammed.

:raspberry: to Jordan and his company!

9

Maybe that was God’s punishment on Taiwan for not allowing Magic Johnson to enter in 1995 and promote his All-Stars basketball team and educate the public about AIDS. Lord knows the island needs that more than Nike’s pseudo-culture bullshit.

1 Like
10

hope he lasted more than three minutes with the locals in his hotel room
:smiling_imp:

11

How much did he score?

12

Lane119, did you edit your post to make it more controvertial or did the ETaiwanNews edit theres to make it sound less bad. The version you linked and the version you pasted are different, noteably here.

ETaiwanNews version as of 3:43 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Your version

13

triple-double? :astonished:

14

I saw a brief interview on TV with Jordan before he came to Taiwan in which he said that he was excited to come to Taiwan to see the kids’ basketball culture here. He said he wanted to see the energy (or something like that) that was generated surrounding the sport.
I wonder how much of that he gleaned.
The guy is a real snake oil salesman if you ask me. The only thing he can do now is come back and spend three or four days giving clinics and actually going out to see the pickup games that go on around the island.

15

Jordan’s appearance was as fake as basketball, and as airheaded as Nike and its youth culture, read creating a market of easily impressed kids to buy it’s over-priced goods.

16

Part of the blame also needs to be put on the organizers and MJ’s handlers. Maybe he was sick. We don’t know the whole story. I really doubt he would have come all this way for such a quick hi and goodbye. Something must have gone terribly wrong behind the scenes.

17

Personally, I think these people (the fans) got what they deserved. I hardly think having a sports ‘star’ as a role model, or better yet as one kid said “I’ve been waiting 20 years to see him” is a healthy thing…get real…get a life…read a book :laughing:

18

I’m curious. I know there is a goodly number of British people posting here, some of whom I suppose are around ages with me and many of whom are much younger.
When I was a highschool kid, nobody but the nancy-boys and the steckies (non-athletic types who weren’t worth having on real teams) would even be seen dead on a basketball pitch – that would be your credibility totally gone right there.
The deal was: football or rugby, with track or cricket in summertime, and basketball for the poofs (in the parlance of the times). The only time we set foot on the baskeball pitch would be when it was raining too hard or the pitch was frozen, so we’d go in the gym, turf out the poofs and play 5-a-side.
Some of you younger Brits, when did basketball lose its girly image? (in Britain I’m talking about – I know it has a totally different image in the states).

19

[quote=“sandman”]I’m curious. I know there is a goodly number of British people posting here, some of whom I suppose are around ages with me and many of whom are much younger.
When I was a highschool kid, nobody but the nancy-boys and the steckies (non-athletic types who weren’t worth having on real teams) would even be seen dead on a basketball pitch – that would be your credibility totally gone right there.
The deal was: football or rugby, with track or cricket in summertime, and basketball for the poofs (in the parlance of the times). The only time we set foot on the baskeball pitch would be when it was raining too hard or the pitch was frozen, so we’d go in the gym, turf out the poofs and play 5-a-side.
Some of you younger Brits, when did basketball lose its girly image? (in Britain I’m talking about – I know it has a totally different image in the states).[/quote]

Girly Image? You never had to handle me in the low post. :smiling_imp: I am a load.

20

[color=indigo]Netball was always a girlie game, like rounders.[/color]