He had a million dollar buy in blackjack tournament

Speaking of the one who likes to bet, who was in the OG of the movie.

He had a million dollar buy in blackjack tournament over Thanksgiving at one of his houses.

Ten people were there.

Michael Jordan

Mike Anthony: Michael Jordan’s $45,000 blackjack hands and my late-night search for the basketball icon in a Connecticut casino

The assignment on Oct. 26, 2001, back in my “Courant Sports, can I help you?” days, was simple: Find Michael Jordan, then-sports editor Jeff Otterbein told me. “He’ll be up to something after the game.”

I wasn’t even a reporter yet and, looking back, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing most of the time. Who does at 24? I was a part-time clerk with writing dreams working probably 60 hours a week, if that makes any sense.

So the first order of the day was to take my usual Friday afternoon seat in the Courant’s third-floor sports department and type up one high school and college box score after another and keep grabbing the phone.

Friday nights were wild. “Courant Sports, can I help you?” I got so used to saying that, I’d sometimes answer the phone that way at home.

But here I was, dying to be more involved. And here Otterbein was, needing someone willing to do anything because who else could he send to Mohegan Sun to track down Jordan in a casino? He sent “The Kid,” as I was known in the newsroom in those days.

We didn’t know where Jordan would be or what he would do after playing an exhibition game for the Wizards, the team of his true “Last Dance,” against the Celtics. We sure had a guess. Jordan owned a steakhouse on site, he still owned the sports and entertainment world in a way so few have, and we figured he’d look to own the night.

He did. He sat in the high stakes blackjack section alongside Richard Hamilton and Antoine Walker past midnight, past last call, past the morning delivery of pastries, through the thick clouds of cigar smoke, cards turning, chips stacked, hollering. He stayed there until I was deliriously tired. He stayed there until he was assured to leave a winner. – Source

Michael Jordan’s gambling explained: ‘I love to bet’

The first five episodes of ESPN’s documentary on the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, “The Last Dance,” often cast Michael Jordan as nearly invincible — conqueror of villains (Isiah Thomas, the Bad Boys) and a worldwide basketball celebrity who could prompt even Larry Bird to gush that the guard was really “God disguised as Michael Jordan.”

The sixth episode, which aired Sunday, examined the ways that competitiveness manifested itself off the court.

You don’t think Jordan liked to gamble? Want to bet?

Gambling stories are as interwoven with Jordan’s career as those of his six NBA championships, forever linking him to high-stakes golf wagers, late nights in Atlantic City and fueling a conspiracy theory — which is just that, a conspiracy theory — that an image-conscious NBA nudged Jordan into his first retirement, in 1993, following league investigations into money he owed to cover gambling losses.

Jordan, in the documentary, says his addiction was to competition, not betting, but previous episodes of “The Last Dance” have already shown how the two mixed. After a Super Bowl victory by the Denver Broncos, Jordan, on a team plane, is seen telling teammates to pay up. And just after he entered the NBA, Scottie Pippen recalled that Jordan purchased him a new set of golf clubs, a gift disguised as a means for Jordan to take Pippen’s money on the course. – Source