Michael Jordan’s father’s killer could go free as judge seeks parole decades after heartbreaking photo of NBA legend’s first championship

It’s an image as iconic as any of Michael Jordan and it shows a side of the retired basketball legend rarely seen. He had just won his first NBA title and was visibly exhausted and overcome with emotion as he held the championship trophy that had eluded him for nearly a decade.

While Jordan holds the hardware in his hands, a familiar person holds the Bulls’ superstar, a man who has been by his side from the beginning: his father James Jordan.

“I always felt like if he had to play the whole season for free to get on the mound, he would have done that,” NBA official photographer Andrew Bernstein recalled in an interview with NBA.com before the Receiving the Curt Gowdy Media Award in 2018. “I knew this was a special moment. I took a few frames very quickly.”

The elder Jordan’s murder in July 1993 had a major impact on his son and changed the course of his career in ways no one could have predicted. Two 18-year-old men have been convicted of murdering James Jordan. Police said James Jordan was stopped on a highway to sleep in the red Lexus his son gave him after leading the Bulls to their third straight title when he was shot during a robbery gone wrong.

Now, retired judge Gregory Weeks, who presided over the 1996 trial, has asked the state’s parole board to release one of those men, Daniel Green, NBC reports. Co-defendant Larry Demery testified that Green pulled the trigger that fired the fatal shot. Demery pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, armed robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery, while Green was found guilty of murder during the commission of robbery and conspiracy to commit robbery. Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment.

James Jordan’s body was found in a swamp in South Carolina and identified through dental records. Green was later seen in a video rapping while wearing an NBA All-Star ring and a gold watch that Michael Jordan gave his father.

But Green has insisted he did not kill the elder Jordan, despite admitting to helping dispose of the body.

“I had nothing to do with this man losing his life, period. I was not connected to the murder. I came in after he was already dead,” Green said in a 2019 interview at Lumberton Correctional Institution in Robeson County, North Carolina.

Green’s lawyers said they had evidence that their client was not involved in the murder. Whether this motivated Judge Weeks to request her client’s release is unclear. North Carolina Parole Board hearings are not public. NBC contacted the judge and Michael Jordan but did not receive a response.

After his father’s death, Michael Jordan shocked the sports world when he quit basketball and went to play baseball – a tribute to his late father, who had always dreamed of a big league career. Michael Jordan spent a year in the minors, at Double-A Birmingham, where he did better than anyone could have expected.

But he belonged on the court and in March 1995 he returned to the NBA. The following season, Jordan led the Bulls to their fourth championship. After the decisive game, he collapsed to the floor in the locker, crying.

“I know he’s watching,” he said. “This is for Dad.”

Jordan’s father still looms large in the retired legend’s mind. In an interview on his 50th birthday, he lamented that “Pops” never met his then-fiancée Yvette Prieto and never saw his grandchildren grow up.

“He died in 1993. Jasmine was one year old. Marcus was 3 years old. Jeffrey was 5 years old,” Jordan said.

To this day, he obsessively watches old westerns with his father, just like he once did.

“What we did,” he says, “was stay up all night and watch cowboy movies.”

After James Jordan was murdered, Bernstein, the NBA photographer, received a call from Michael’s office requesting a print of his iconic snapshot.

“I was very close to my father and Michael Jordan knew him – my father was with me through the whole Dream Team experience (1992),” he said. “And I knew his father. So it was a poignant moment in my career that he requested this photo. If I had to choose one photo for my gravestone, it would probably be this one.”