{"id":737085,"date":"2026-05-17T22:33:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T22:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/737085\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T22:33:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T22:33:16","slug":"ex-bull-on-michael-jordans-100k-rock-paper-scissors-bets-last-year-he-made-150m-how-are-you-messing-with-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/737085\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Bull on Michael Jordan’s $100K rock-paper-scissors bets: “Last year he made $150M, how are you messing with him?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

You can gamble alone \u2014 a casino works perfectly well for that. But doing it with others is a different kind of fun, and the legendary Michael Jordan<\/a> seemed to know that better than most, especially when his teammates were involved.<\/p>\n

Former NBA point guard Jay Williams<\/a> said as much back in 2015.<\/p>\n

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Williams recalled how in Jordan’s world, betting with fellow players was just part of the game. What made it truly wild, though, was the scale \u2014 the basketball icon was apparently putting $100,000 on a children’s game.<\/p>\n

How Jordan’s legend reached Williams<\/p>\n

Jordan dominated the NBA throughout the 1990s with the Chicago Bulls<\/a>. He won six championships before retiring for the second time in 1999.<\/p>\n

Williams was drafted by the same franchise in 2002. He went second overall out of Duke<\/a>. By then, Jordan was long gone from the Bulls \u2014 the two never actually played together in the \u201cWindy City.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Still, Williams got a strong sense of Jordan\u2019s presence within the ball club. After all, a few players from the championship era were still on the roster when he arrived, and they brought their stories with them. Through those conversations, Williams got his first real taste of the Jordan folklore. The competitiveness. The intensity. And naturally, the gambling.<\/p>\n

It was from those former teammates that Williams first heard one of the more infamous anecdotes. According to the former 6\u20192\u2019\u2019 playmaker, Jordan had a line he’d drop in high-stakes moments, stating<\/a>, “Yo, bet it back \u2014 rock, paper, scissors for $100,000.”<\/p>\n

Jordan, like on the hardwood, showed no mercy. When others let it slide, he would lean in on a guy who was already down hard. The five-time MVP made it simple. Fold after a loss, or try to win it all back in one crazy bet.<\/p>\n

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Related: “He had two stacks of $100 bills and threw them at me” – Horace Grant recalls sending Michael Jordan into fury over gambling debt<\/a><\/p>\n

When you earn like MJ, boredom gets expensive<\/p>\n

NBA players love to gamble. Long road trips will do that to you. Most of them, though, can’t afford to throw serious money at something that trivial.<\/p>\n

Jordan, however, operated on a different financial level, and according to Williams, that was exactly why his behavior made sense in the context of his own life, even if it looked insane from the outside.<\/p>\n

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Williams figured it this way. When you’re pulling in Jordan money, you get \u201cbored.\u201d That’s when cash starts to mean something different. You simply can do it. So why wouldn’t you?<\/p>\n

Still, what puzzled Williams more were the guys around Jordan. The Bulls players who were actually willing to bet against the franchise’s cornerstone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m like, ‘Why are you f\u2014ng with the big bank? Why are you f\u2014ng with Brand Jordan? He can’t lose. Last year he made $150 million, how are you messing with him?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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The infamous MJ luggage story<\/a>, once told by Bill Simmons, showed the same mindset.<\/p>\n

Back in the day, Jordan quietly asked a baggage handler to pick which bag would hit first. He then slipped them a few hundred dollars, and the group \u2014 unbeknownst to the setup \u2014 bet on it.<\/p>\n

His Airness had a hand in that one, sure. But it illustrated the bigger point. After all, nobody standing around that carousel was probably all that surprised the Hall of Fame swingman would put real money on something like that.<\/p>\n

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Related: Charles Barkley on Michael Jordan betting $300k on a single putt: “A couple hundred thousand dollars ain’t a lot to him”<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Basketball Network<\/a> on May 17, 2026, where it first appeared in the Off The Court<\/a> section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You can gamble alone \u2014 a casino works perfectly well for that. But doing it with others is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3771],"tags":[7,920,919,329,3824,5473,935,6],"class_list":["post-737085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago-bulls","tag-basketball","tag-bulls","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-bulls","tag-chicagobulls","tag-jay-williams","tag-michael-jordan","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116592299470402771","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737085\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}