The Kelce family just expanded their team!

On Friday, Feb. 24, Jason Kelce and his wife, Kylie, announced the arrival of their third child, a baby girl.

In the Instagram post, the Philadelphia Eagles center and now-mother-of-three shared that daughter Bennett Llewellyn Kelce was born on Thursday, Feb. 23.

“Yesterday little lady #3 joined us. Bennett Llewellyn Kelce,” the caption reads, with the photo showing their newborn fast asleep in a floral onesie and matching headband.

The post added that she was “8lbs. 5oz. and 21 inches long.”

Little Bennett joins her big sisters Wyatt, 3, and Elliotte, 23 months.

Shortly after they made the birth announcement, Kylie Kelce shared a collage of her three daughters as newborns.

“I know that they all just look squishy at this stage,” she wrote on her Instagram story. “But I really feel like Bennett is pretty much a clean split.”

Kylie Kelce shared how much her daughters looked alike when they were born. Instagram/KyKelce

The NFL star faced off against his brother, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, during the Feb 12 Super Bowl game. Travis Kelce and his team would end up victorious in the end.

Jason and Kylie Kelce had a plan in case she went into labor and delivered her baby that day. At the time, the expectant mother was 38 weeks pregnant and brought her OB-GYN to the game — just to be safe.

In an interview with People, she said, “We don’t have a name, but my husband keeps making the joke that if she does come while we’re out there that we’ll name her Super, which is one of the most absurd things I’ve ever heard of in life.”

While she did not go into labor that day, she celebrated her husband’s “incredible run” by posting photos from the Super Bowl.

“What an incredible run. Wasn’t the outcome we wanted… but at least I didn’t go into labor at the game (even though I was in amazing hands with my OB dream team),” she captioned her slideshow. “Scroll to see the moment Wyatt cues ‘all of the lights’.”

Jason and Kylie Kelce have been married since 2018. They announced that they were expecting their third child together in September 2022 with a photo of their daughters wearing “big sister” sweatshirts.

 

Travis Kelce, Jason Kelce. Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images ; Courtesy of Kylie (McDevitt) Kelce/Instagram

Jason Kelce’s daughters famously didn’t want Travis to win the 2022 Super Bowl, but the girls still love their “Uncle Travy.”

Travis Kelce isn’t a father, just yet, but he’s definitely a model uncle to brother Jason Kelce and sister-in-law Kylie Kelce’s three daughters — Wyatt Elizabeth born in October 2019, Elliotte Ray born in March 2021 and Bennett Llewellyn born in February 2023.

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“Travis is the perfect uncle. He really is,” Jason told E! News in September 2023 about his younger brother, noting that his daughters are “drawn to him immediately.”

“Partly because he’s gorgeous, but then also he’s just a fun human being,” Jason added. “He’s exciting. He has energy for days.”

However, it might be a while until Travis can take care of the girls on his own.

“I know we give him crap. We will not leave him alone with them. They’re too young,” Jason added, noting that his brother has a “zest” for life.

Kylie echoed her husband’s sentiments about letting Travis watch their daughters.

“How long, if at all, would you allow me to babysit the girls unsupervised?” Travis asked Kylie when she appeared on the “New Heights” podcast in September 2023.

“I think my headphones just cut out,” Kylie quipped back. “Would it be by yourself? … But then who’s watching you?”

On a more serious note, Kylie said she would leave her brother-in-law with the girls for “one hour.”

“I feel like Travis can stand longer than [Jason] can. I feel like that’s a gamechanger when it comes to small babies,” she added. “Bennett right now, she’s happy as a clam if you just get up and walk around with her.”

Keep scrolling to see Travis’ sweetest moments with his nieces:

Credit: Courtesy of Jason Kelce/Instagram

Not a Fan of the Pink Hair

When Travis was wearing a pink wig in June 2023, Wyatt was not a fan.

“Take it off! Take it off!” she told her uncle. “Because I don’t like it!”

He responded, “I thought you said you wanted dad to have pink hair?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want you to have pink hair,” she hit back, calling Travis “naughty” and “sneaky.”

Credit: Courtesy of Prime Video

Meeting Bennett

Travis met Jason and Kylie’s youngest daughter for the first time following her February 2023 birth. It was filmed for the Prime Video’s Kelce documentary, which was released in September 2023.

“Just like a football,” Jason joked, putting the baby in his brother’s arms.

Credit: Philadelphia Eagles/Youtube (2)

The Girls Crash ‘New Heights’

Wyatt and Elliotte walked in on Jason and Travis recording their “New Heights” podcast, as seen on a January 2023 episode of the Philadelphia Eagles’ Unscripted series.

“This is my favorite time of the year right here,” Travis said as he spoke with both girls. “Favorite time of the day, favorite time of the week.”

Credit: New Heights/Youtube

Wyatt Showing Uncle Travis Love

Jason and Kylie’s eldest crashed the “New Heights” podcast recording in December 2022.

“We can hear an adorable little voice,” Travis told his brother as Wyatt came on screen, waving to her uncle. “Hey baby Wy.”

Credit: Courtesy of @newheightshow/X (formerly known as Twitter)

The Best Part of His Day

New Promo: While recording the October 11, 2023, episode of their podcast, Jason let his daughters Wyatt and Elliotte briefly say hello to their uncle.

“How are you doing? You’re smiling big,” Travis asked Elliotte. “You’re making my day!”

Ellie then put on her floral pair of sunglasses, to which her stylish uncle praised the look. “I love it,” Travis gushed.

Wyatt also got some face time with her uncle, showing off her pastel leotard from gymnastics practice. “How about those pink shoes from the [Eagles] game, those were fun?” Travis asked her, to which she agreed.

On Friday, sister-in-law Kylie Kelce posted footage on Instagram sharing a behind-the-scenes look at the family’s 2023 holiday card photo shoot in partnership with Minted.

“❤️❤️❤️ This just made my day!” the proud uncle, 34, commented on the video, which shows Jason Kelce and his wife giving sideline-style commentary on what it takes to wrangle their three daughters — Bennett, 8 months, Elliotte, 2, and Wyatt, 3,

“This is our fourth season with Minted,” Kylie shares.

Jason shakes his head, saying, “It’s gonna be a long season. You can tell.”

As Kylie reminds the girls to keep their “hands to ourselves” and “turn around,” Jason tries to keep the kids and dogs in place.

“I am prepared for football. I am not prepared for the holiday season,” he says.

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Related: Jason Kelce’s Kids: All About His Daughters Wyatt, Elliotte and Bennett

Kylie adds, “Preparation was making sure that we had a nutritious breakfast … because we were about to bribe the livin’ daylights out of these children.”

As they prepare for different shots, Ellie can be seen sitting with her dad and enjoying a donut as Kylie notes, “It’s an endurance game.”
Megan Cash for Minted

Jason Kelce’s 2023 family holiday card with Minted
Speaking with PEOPLE about the holiday shoot, Kylie shared, “Jason and I definitely, it’s definitely a joint effort to wrangle our children. There’s all hands going out to grab whoever we can, to make sure that we can keep them as close as possible.”

She added, “We had a few photos this year with the dogs which just adds a whole new level of challenge.”

Ahead of the 2023 Super Bowl — in which the Kelce brothers faced off against one another — Jason’s wife Kylie told PEOPLE that Travis is the “absolute best” uncle to her girls.

Jason Kelce/Instagram

Jason Kelce, Donna Kelce, and Travis Kelce with Elliotte and Wyatt
“It’s very funny, Jason said in an interview that he thinks [the girls] might like him more than they like Jason,” Kylie joked.

“I tell everybody, he comes to our house to visit and the poor guy doesn’t sit on the couch because our daughters will be like, ‘No, no, you sit on the floor. We’re gonna do a puzzle. We’re gonna build blocks. We’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that,’” she added.

“Our oldest, she’s our boss. She’s our ring leader, and she just has demand after demand for him. And I’m like, ‘Trav, you know you can tell Wyatt no?’”

“He was like ‘Yeah, I don’t think I can.’ And so he will do it,” she shared.

“She’ll be like, ‘Jump up and down.’ He’ll do it. ‘Roll on the floor,’ he’ll do it. ‘Be the pony.’ He’ll do it. So he’s all-in when it comes to being an uncle. He is the epitome of an uncle, just through and through.”

Jason Kelce/Instagram

Jason Kelce, Donna Kelce, and Travis Kelce with Elliotte and Wyatt
“It’s very funny, Jason said in an interview that he thinks [the girls] might like him more than they like Jason,” Kylie joked.

“I tell everybody, he comes to our house to visit and the poor guy doesn’t sit on the couch because our daughters will be like, ‘No, no, you sit on the floor. We’re gonna do a puzzle. We’re gonna build blocks. We’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that,’” she added.

“Our oldest, she’s our boss. She’s our ring leader, and she just has demand after demand for him. And I’m like, ‘Trav, you know you can tell Wyatt no?’”

“He was like ‘Yeah, I don’t think I can.’ And so he will do it,” she shared.

“She’ll be like, ‘Jump up and down.’ He’ll do it. ‘Roll on the floor,’ he’ll do it. ‘Be the pony.’ He’ll do it. So he’s all-in when it comes to being an uncle. He is the epitome of an uncle, just through and through.”

Jason Kelce and Fletcher Cox met their baseball counterparts before throwing the first pitch at Citizens Bank Park on Saturday.

Before the Philadelphia Phillies took the diamond at home against the Atlanta Braves, the Eagles legends visited the locker room to meet a few players.

The newly retired NFL stars were pictured chatting with Bryson Stott, Jacob Realmuto, and Kyle Schwarber. They also posed for a photo with Brandon Marsh.

‘We’ve got a couple legends at the ballpark today,’ the Phillies captioned on X (formerly Twitter).

Their invitation to throw the first pitch comes shortly after Kelce and Cox announced their retirements this offseason. Kelce, however, took to social media earlier this week and claimed to be too injured to pitch.

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Cox and Kelce both announced their retirements from the NFL earlier in March

Before Saturday, Kelce joked that his elbow ‘doesn’t work’ and he will not be able to pitch

‘Yes Saturday, not the home opener, and to be clear @fcoxx_91 is gonna have to throw it because my elbow doesn’t work,’ Kelce wrote on X.

Despite his claim, Kelce threw the first pitch before signing Phillies star Bryce Harper’s shoes.

Top Storiesby Daily Mail00:0601:00

Kelce and Fletcher both spent their entire careers in Philadelphia. They were teammates for 12 seasons, with Fletcher getting drafted in 2012 and Kelce the year prior.

A First-Team All-Pro member in 2018 and six-time Pro-Bowler, Cox announced his retirement on March 10. Over his career, the defensive tackle tallied 519 tackles and 70.0 sacks.

On the other hand, Kelce held a press conference to announce his retirement on March 4. The center called it a career after six First-Team All-Pro and seven Pro Bowl selections.

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Jason Kelce and Fletcher Cox met Phillies players before throwing the first pitch on Saturday

Two of the most iconic Eagles players of all-time get a huge ovation as they kick-off their retirements by throwing out the first pitch before Saturday’s game.

Unlike Opening Day, there was no surprise as to who was throwing out the first pitch before Saturday’s matchup between the Phillies and Braves.

In the latest New Heights podcast, Jason Kelce announced it would be him and Fletcher Cox.

Before Friday’s game, Charlie Manuel had the honors.

Kelce and Cox, two Eagles legends who both announced their retirement this NFL offseason, were met with a standing ovation from the crowd at Citizens Bank Park (and a thunderous Eagles chant).

The pair threw to Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber. Afterward, Harper snagged a one-of-a-kind momento, having Kelce sign his cleats.

Philadelphia Phillies

Complete coverage of the Fightin’ Phils and their MLB rivals from NBC Sports Philadelphia.

Natasha Dye
27 October 2023·3-min read

Before they were NFL stars, brothers Jason and Travis Kelce were aspiring young athletes in Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Travis Kelce/Instagram

Travis and Jason Kelce’s Baby Photos Go Viral
Before they were NFL stars, Jason and Travis Kelce were the cutest kids in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Amid the brothers’ newfound fame as Travis, 34, continues his budding romance with Taylor Swift, baby photos of the Ohio natives have gone viral on social media.

In the adorable photos, shared in 2013 on Travis’s Instagram account, Jason, 35, and his younger brother are pictured as babies in a side-by-side split. On the left, Jason is pictured holding a toy football while Travis is seen in a red sweater walking towards the camera.

In his caption on the Sept. 19, 2013 post, Travis wrote, “#KELCE vs #KELCE…. I might not be playing tonight vs my bro but who are you all taking in a #BabyKelceBrawl?”

Travis didn’t play in the 2013 game due to a knee injury, but the Chiefs still managed to pull off a 26-16 win over Jason’s Philadelphia Eagles.

Related: Jason Kelce Cries Talking About Whether He Should Retire in New Doc: ‘Tearing My Body Apart’

Travis Kelce/Instagram

Jason and Travis Kelce’s baby photos
A decade later, the brothers faced one another in the 2023 Super Bowl, which NFL fans dubbed “The Kelce Bowl” at the time.

Before the big game in February, Jason and Travis’s mom Donna Kelce shared exclusive throwback photos with PEOPLE from the NFL stars’ childhood.

At the time, Donna told PEOPLE that she and their father, Ed Kelce, “didn’t know what sport they were going to pick” to pursue professionally, because both Jason and Travis “were very good at a lot of sports.”

Courtesy of Donna and Ed Kelce Throwback of Travis and Jason Kelce
Related: Travis Kelce’s Dad Ed Watched Taylor Swift Interviews to ‘Get a Sense’ of What She’s Like (Exclusive)

According to Donna, they both excelled at football, baseball, lacrosse, soccer, basketball and baseball as children.

Jason also explored wrestling in his younger years, Donna shared. “I think Jason liked lacrosse the best and Travis liked basketball the best,” she recalled.

Another photo from the Kelces’ childhood shows a young Travis — now a tight end on the Kansas City Chiefs — dressed head-to-toe in Browns gear while standing beside the now-Philadelphia Eagles’ Jason, who is dressed casually in blue jeans, a red t-shirt and a windbreaker outside the family’s home.

Courtesy of Donna and Ed Kelce Throwback of Travis and Jason Kelce
Donna said both Jason and Travis are equally competitive and it’s always been that way.

“They do not like to lose,” she shared. “That’s why they’re the professionals that they are. It’s give everything you can. When you don’t think you have any more in the tank, you push harder and you find out how far you can stretch yourself.”

Jumping forward a few years, the boys are pictured in their Cleveland Heights High School uniforms, where their football dreams started to become reality.

Courtesy of Donna and Ed Kelce Throwback of Travis and Jason Kelce
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Donna has fond memories of her time taking the boys to compete during their pre-NFL careers. “My most favorite games were Bearcat games at the University of Cincinnati, just because of my camaraderie with the parents,” she said.

“You’re with those kids and parents for five years,” Donna explained. “Nobody’s getting traded, nobody’s quitting and going to another school. It’s just you’re with these people on the road, in rain and cold and snow and sleet and everything else. And you get really close bonds with those individuals.”

It’s been quite a month for Philly sports icon Jason Kelce.

Just a few weeks after the longtime center for the Philadelphia Eagles announced his retirement from the NFL, Kelce enjoyed a nice day at the ballpark for Saturday’s matinee between the Phillies and Braves at Citizens Bank Park.

First, while wearing a custom No. 62 Phillies jersey, Kelce and fellow Eagles legend Fletcher Cox — who also recently announced his retirement — threw out ceremonial first pitches following a brief rain delay. Moments later, in a move that showed just what Kelce means to even other Philadelphia athletes, he autographed Bryce Harper’s cleats — with Harper still wearing them.

Kelce had been concerned that he wouldn’t have a good showing on the mound because of an ailing arm, but he told the Phillies’ broadcast crew afterward that he only had to do better than his brother, Travis, who threw out a first pitch last season in Cleveland. And, well, that didn’t go so well.

“The bar was set nice and low,” Kelce said.

Kelce spikes the first pitch

But when the moment came, Kelce threw a seed to Harper, who then had the Philly legend sign his cleats.

“It was an awesome experience,” Kelce said. “Really, really cool.”

Kelce played 13 seasons in the NFL, all with the Eagles — including helping lead the team to a victory in Super Bowl LII. And as he showed Saturday, the love for Kelce in Philadelphia — even among its baseball stars — runs deep.

 

Clearly in shock and disagreement, Travis hilariously quipped, “What?” He then noted that they weigh similar amounts, which could be a contributing factor to who can beat the other.

you

“You’re already down to 260. We’re in the same weight class now,” he said.

“Yeah I know,” said Jason. “But you don’t have the heart I do when it comes to drinking. You’ve been drinking more than I have recently.”

Travis responded with a fiery claim: “He hasn’t stayed out past 10 p.m. since 2017!”

Jason found several examples to prove Travis’s bold statement wrong. “Did you not see me at your playoff games this year?” the now-retired Eagles player said to which Travis quipped, “Do you remember any of that?” Still keeping up his fight, Jason said “No – because I was drinking all day.”

When it comes to drinking games, the dad of three said he’d beat his brother without question.

cleveland Cavaliers/x

Jason and Travis Kelce chugging beers
cleveland Cavaliers/x

Jason and Travis Kelce chugging beers
Related: Jason Kelce Strips Down Again Following His Shirtless Antics at Chiefs vs. Bills Game

“I will destroy him because I got the mental advantage,” Jason added.

When Barkley asked which brother would reign supreme when it comes to shotgunning a beer, Travis tried to remember if the last time they did so was after the Kansas City Chiefs beat the Buffalo Bills in the playoffs.

“We didn’t shotgun beers after the Bills, did we?” Jason asked, prompting all three NFL pros to laugh.

Travis then pointed to the silly moment in January when Jason went viral after pulling his shirt off in the stands of Highmark Stadium while cheering on his brother.

Kathryn Riley/Getty

Jason Kelce shirtless
Kathryn Riley/Getty

Jason Kelce shirtless
“You had a shirt on at that point,” he said with a laugh. “Well, it’s on like Donkey Kong,” he added. “We’re going to enter ourselves in this drinking contest. Maybe at the shore or something.”

The pair and Cleveland Heights natives put their drinking chops to the test when they were served beers by the Cleveland Cavaliers mascot Moondog during a game. In a video shared on X (formerly known as Twitter), the two were busy before the mascot approached them with two beers.

They then stood up and lifted their beers to the sky before clinking their cups. The video, which had no sound, then captured the Kelces swiftly gulping their drinks down and smiling once they had finished.

Travis then then raised his arms up to hype of the crowd, while Jason lifted a fist up in the air and hugged the mascot.

You had a shirt on at that point,” he said with a laugh. “Well, it’s on like Donkey Kong,” he added. “We’re going to enter ourselves in this drinking contest. Maybe at the shore or something.”

The pair and Cleveland Heights natives put their drinking chops to the test when they were served beers by the Cleveland Cavaliers mascot Moondog during a game. In a video shared on X (formerly known as Twitter), the two were busy before the mascot approached them with two beers.

They then stood up and lifted their beers to the sky before clinking their cups. The video, which had no sound, then captured the Kelces swiftly gulping their drinks down and smiling once they had finished.

Travis then then raised his arms up to hype of the crowd, while Jason lifted a fist up in the air and hugged the mascot.

Kylian Mbappe is among the best soccer players on the planet. Blending blistering pace, and a keen eye for goal, the Paris Saint Germain forward could play for any team of his choosing.

However, hardly any team could afford Mbappe’s transfer fee. In soccer, teams don’t make trades. Instead, they purchase the rights to a player courtesy of a ‘transfer.’

According to multiple reports, Saudi Arabian soccer team Al-Hilal have thrown their hat into the ring in an attempt to sign Mbappe this summer. The reported transfer offer is for $332M.

To put that into context, Al-Hilal is willing to spend more on Mbappe than what Michael Jordan paid when he originally acquired the Charlotte Hornets for $275M in 2010.

This is roughly a little bit more than what Michael Jordan originally paid for the whole Charlotte Hornets franchise… https://t.co/dxT2WEPq2a

— Adam Taylor (@AdamTaylorNBA) July 24, 2023

“Paris Saint-Germain have granted permission for Kylian Mbappe to speak to Al Hilal after the Saudi club’s world-record £259M [$332M] bid,” Sky Sports UK reported. “There is said to already be a “hot market” for the France captain with the interested clubs including Chelsea, Manchester United, Inter Milan and Barcelona.”

When Jordan parted with $275M, he was buying a whole franchise — an investment that recently saw him sell his shares for $3B. However, in the world of soccer, where large quantities of money exchange hands like Pokemon cards on early-2000s playgrounds, Mbappe’s price appears to be deemed fair.

Should Mbappe’s transfer to Al-Hilal go ahead, he will become the most expensive soccer player of all time. While Mbappe’s transfer fee falls drastically short of an NBA franchise’s value in 2023, it’s mind-boggling to think he is worth more than what an NBA franchise cost just 13 years ago.

The Hornets were once one of Jordan’s most expensive purchases. Now, $275M wouldn’t even build a high-level soccer team. The sporting world is changing, and Mbappe is reaping the benefits of those changes.

Michael Jordan is regarded by most as the greatest basketball player of all time, winning six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls, and picking up countless personal accolades along the way.

Everyone wanted to ‘Be Like Mike’ in the ’80s and ’90s, however the former NBA star is self-admittedly not perfect.

His achievements on the basketball court and in the commercial world, where he has racked up a wealth of around $2.1billion, are almost unmatched, but throughout his career, Jordan showed hints of a darker side.

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He is regarded as the greatest basketball player ever, but Michael Jordan also had a dark side

Punching Steve Kerr

In the 1990s, NBA team practice was a lot more intense than it is in the modern era. Nowadays, players are given more time to rest and recover amid the packed game schedule.

But in a Bulls training camp before the 1995-96 season after Jordan’s return from mini-retirement, Jordan and Steve Kerr started getting rough with each other, to the point where a heated scuffle broke out between the two of them ending with Kerr receiving a black eye.

There are apparently no hard feelings these days, and Kerr, who is now head coach of the Golden State Warriors, actually believed it helped out in the long run.

‘I would definitely say it helped our relationship,’ said Kerr in recent interview on TNT. ‘Practices were really intense. They were a huge part of the Bulls and Michael setting a standard for our play.

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Jordan once punched Steve Kerr during Bulls practice, leaving him with a black eye’For me in that case, Michael was definitely testing me, and I responded, and I feel like I passed the test and he trusted me more afterwards.’

He also says practice fights were more common than people might think in the teams he played for, revealing there were ‘probably three’ just in that season alone, although didn’t mention whether Jordan was involved in the others.

After the incident, Jordan and Kerr won three NBA championships together, including a famous moment where Kerr hit the winning shot against the Utah Jazz in 1997 after a crucial pass from Jordan.

Keeping quiet on political issues

Although he wasn’t obligated to share his political opinions with anyone, there is no doubting that a lot of people were disappointed when Jordan didn’t endorse politician Harvey Gantt in his 1990 senatorial race against Jesse Helms in North Carolina, where Jordan lived from a young age.

It was almost expected that as a highly respected black athlete, Jordan would speak out against Helms, who was against having a holiday dedicated to Martin Luther King, was accused of being pro-segregation, and was also against homosexuality.

However, Jordan chose to remain silent, and things became worse for his brand when he was quoted as saying ‘Republicans buy sneakers too’ when asked why he wasn’t speaking out.

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Some criticised Jordan for not endorsing Harvey Gantt’s North Carolina senatorial campaign

Jordan has since claimed that it was a throwaway joke made on the Bulls’ team bus, but people still took it to mean he was more interested in making money by selling his Nike branded shoes than fighting for social justice.

Even former US President Barack Obama weighed in, appearing on Netflix’s The Last Dance documentary.

‘For somebody who was at that time preparing for a career in civil rights law and public life, and knowing what Jesse Helms stood for, you would have wanted to see Michael push harder on that,’ said Obama.

Jordan says he did donate to Gantt’s campaign, but Helms went on to win the 1990 election, and held the position of North Carolina senator from 1973-2003.

Rivalry with Isiah Thomas

Before winning six NBA championships, Jordan and the Bulls spent a lot of time chasing after the Detroit Pistons. The ‘Bad Boys’, so-called for their aggressive, defense-oriented play, and led by Isiah Thomas, won back-to-back championships in 1989 and 1990.

The Pistons knew how good Jordan was, so came up with the ‘Jordan Rules’.  Simply put, the Pistons would bully Jordan physically, and commit players to him in order to starve him of the ball. It eventually led to Jordan beefing up to compete with strength of his own.

Then in 1991, the Bulls swept the Pistons in the championship finals and the Bad Boys walked off the court before the final game was even over, controversially refusing to shake hands.

There were a number of other incidents throughout Jordan’s early career that are attributed to their rivalry, and it eventually led to Thomas allegedly being kept off the 1992 US Olympic Dream Team due to Jordan, despite being one of the top picks.

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Jordan and the Detroit Pistons’ Isiah Thomas had a vicious rivalry spanning many years

‘I don’t know what went into that [selection] process,’ said Thomas on The Last Dance. ‘I met the criteria to be selected, but I wasn’t.’

Although Jordan denies it, people have suggested that Jordan made US head coach (and Detroit coach at the time) Chuck Daly keep Thomas off the team for the Barcelona Games.

It was the first time the US had sent a team of NBA players to the Olympics. ‘Dream Team’ assembled was dominant in 1992, and the US men’s team has won every gold medal since then apart from in 2004.

You wouldn’t begrudge Thomas from feeling left out, especially as Jordan says himself that: ‘the best point guard of all time is Magic Johnson and right behind him is Isiah Thomas. No matter how much I hate him, I respect his game.’

Gambling

Jordan has made no secret of the fact he enjoys gambling over the years, and although it has appeared to be an issue at some stages during his career, he is adamant that he has never had a problem.

The most famous incident when Jordan’s gambling came to the spotlight was during the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals against the New York Knicks.

In order to take some time away from basketball and the bustle of New York, Jordan took a trip to gambling hub Atlantic City, but reports say he went a little overboard.

‘We got a limo, we went and gambled for a couple hours, and we came back,’ he said on The Last Dance. ‘Everybody went totally ballistic. It wasn’t late. We got home by 12.30, 1.’

However, the New York Times say someone spotted him out at 2.30am, and the attention only grew when the Bulls lost game two the following night after an underwhelming performance by Jordan.

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Jordan went on a trip to a casino in Atlantic City before playing the New York Knicks in 1993

It has also emerged that he skipped the Bulls’ trip to the White House after winning the 1991 NBA Finals so that he could go gamble with golf shop owner and convicted cocaine dealer James ‘Slim’ Bouler.

Then Richard Esquinas published a book called ‘Michael and Me’. Esquinas was a self-described recovering gambling addict and addressed his and Jordan’s alleged problems in the text.

He also claimed Jordan owed him a staggering $1.2million in gambling debts from golf bets. Jordan denied that and Esquinas later said they settled with a payment of $300,000.

The Bulls team would also play cards for huge sums of money on flights to and from games, and he supposedly once lost $5m in a Las Vegas casino in a single night.

Jordan insists that he does not have a gambling problem, saying ‘no, because I could stop gambling. I have a competition problem, a competitive problem.’

Trash talk / ‘bullying’

There’s always going to be some ribbing in sport, however some have suggested that Jordan took his trash talk too far on a number of occasions.

He has been accused of bullying Bill Cartwright when he joined the Bulls in 1998, replacing Jordan’s friend Charles Oakley.

Jordan didn’t take kindly to the new recruit initially. He accused him of having bad hands, and would throw bad passes at him at practice to try and highlight this. He would also call him ‘Medical Bill’, although Cartwright did end up helping the Bulls to their ‘three-peat’ championship victories in the early 90s.

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Jordan was accused of ‘bullying’ Bill Cartwright when he replaced Charles Oakley on the Bulls

He also reportedly called Rodney McCray a ‘loser’ in practice when he arrived in Chicago as a reserve forward.

Plus, Jordan’s words have been attributed to the decline of Muggsy Bogues. Playing against the Charlotte Hornets in 1995, Jordan backed off Bogues, and former Bulls assistant coach Johnny Bach claims Jordan said: ‘Shoot it you f****** midget.’

Bogues, the shortest player to ever play in the NBA at 5’3″, missed the shot, and never had a better season in the NBA after that.