NBA legend Michael Jordan has finally tasted victory in NASCAR after an agonizing four-year wait. The six-time NBA Champion, now 61 years old, has co-owned 23XI Racing since 2020 alongside Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin.
Jordan was at Talladega Super Speedway on Sunday to witness a team win in person for the first time. During the final lap, 23XI Racing driver Tyler Reddick in the No. 45 Toyota sat back in the outside lane as he watched on from fifth place as leader Michael McDowell and Brad Keselowski collided on the last corner. This late drama allowed Reddick the opportunity to sneak past on the final straightaway to claim the team’s sixth win.
Jordan watched on throughout from the pit wall and was captured celebrating with both the team and Reddick’s young son Beau as if he’d just won another NBA title. ‘We’ve been working hard, trying to get ourselves up to where we can compete against all the top guys in this sport,’ Jordan told Fox Sports’ Jamie Little after the race. ‘But we’ve done a heck of a job just to be where we are. And for us to win a big race like this, it means so much to me.’
He later said that he is ‘all in,’ adding, ‘I love it. It replaces a lot of the competitiveness that I had in basketball. ‘But this is even worse because I have no control.’
Reddick’s win ends any suggestions of Jordan’s presence being ‘bad luck’ for 23XI Racing – as he mentioned Hamlin had previously joked. ‘Today we proved him wrong,’ Jordan replied, jokingly adding that Hamlin had ‘done a good job by wrecking (at Talladega) so we could get up front.’ Hamlin, Erik Jones, and 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace all crashed out on Lap 156.
Sunday’s win marked Reddick’s fourth top-five finish of the season so far. Wallace has reached the top five on three occasions. 2024 is Jordan’s fourth season as a NASCAR owner, with he and Hamlin having initially sunk $20 million into the project for the No. 45 and No. 23 cars, as per the team. They went on to build a 114,000-square-foot facility called Airspeed near Charlotte. While the cost of this is unknown, according to Hamlin, it eventually set them back twice the original estimate.
Not that this is Jordan’s first taste of team ownership, having previously owned a majority stake in the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets for 13 years. After paying $275 million for his stake in 2010, his investment paid off in the long term, with the team valued at $3 billion at the time of its sale, according to ESPN. ‘We’ve done a heck of a job just to be where we are. And for us to win a big race like this, it means so much to me.’
Hedge fund founder Gabe Plotkin led a group of investors who purchased Jordan’s stake, which included musicians Eric Church and J. Cole. Jordan retains a minority stake in the Hornets.
As for 23 XI Racing, their next opportunity to head to victory lane will come at the Dover International Speedway on Sunday. The team’s best result to date at Dover came last year when Reddick finished seventh.
