Michael Jordan is world renowned for being one of the best basketball players to ever exist. He managed to win 6 Final Champions, 6 Finals MVPs, 5 Regular Season MVPs, 10 Scoring Titles, and is commonly considered to be the goat of basketball. In today’s NBA, there’s a multitude of amazing players like Michael, one of them being Jimmy Butler. In the basketball world, there is a very obscure, very interesting, conspiracy theory connecting these 2 players. The theory goes that Michael Jordan and Jimmy Butler are actually secretly related. To be more specific, it is believed that Jimmy Butler is actually Michael Jordan’s biological son. Now when you first hear this theory, it might seem pretty silly. Who would ever believe that Michael has a secret son and that it’s Jimmy Butler of all people. Well when you start to look at the details, it becomes more and more evident that Michael Jordan and Jimmy Butler might just be father and son.
Michael Jordan has 2 biological sons, Jeffery Jordan and Marcus Jordan. Although they are his real children, they look nothing like him. MJ stands at 6’6 while his sons are only 6’1 and 6’3, a lot shorter than their father. Jimmy on the other hand stands at 6’7 which is only an inch off of Michael’s height. Jimmy Butler and Michael Jordan also look very similar. Going back to MJs 2 biological sons, they look nothing like him while Jimmy and Michael almost look identical.
The nose, the ears, the eyes, the skin completion, the head shape, etcetera, everything lines up to look the exact same. If you take a picture of a young Butler and put him up next to a young MJ, they’ll almost look like the same person.
Besides just looking like each other, there’s some dates that line up to show Jimmy really could be MJ’s son. Around the same time that Jimmy was born, there was a rumor going around that Jordan allegedly had a kid with another woman other than his wife. It was all well documented at the time but there was no solid facts or evidence proving the rumors true. Despite this, it’s still very possible that Jimmy could’ve been that alleged kid from those rumors. On December 3rd, 1988, Michael Jordan and the Bulls played in Dallas, Texas. After that game, they had 3 days off in which they stayed in Dallas, right? The theory goes that instead of staying in Dallas, Jordan took a 3 hour drive to Houston to have a good time during which he met someone and they had a child. Nine months later, that child would’ve been born in September which is exactly where Jimmy Butler’s birthday falls, September 14, 1989 in Houston, Texas.
At this point in time Jordan was a role model to millions and already had a wife with whom he had a kid, Jeffery. It is believed that Michael Jordan payed Jimmy Butler’s mom off to not say anything and to just raise Jimmy while he continued his basketball career. A couple years after all this happened, Jimmy was kicked out of the house by his mother at 13 for her “not liking the way he looked,” which was revealed to us by Jimmy during an interview a few years back. Some started to speculate if there was some deeper meaning behind why he was kicked out. People came up with the idea that Jimmy’s mom actually kicked him out because she couldn’t stand to look at Jimmy since he looked so much like MJ. From there, Jimmy was adopted and grew up to eventually become the star we know today.
Now this theory isn’t perfect in the slightest. There’s a lot of unexplained things that just don’t make sense. Why would Jimmy’s mother stay silent about MJ being Jimmy’s dad? Once Michael stopped paying her off to keep quiet, why wouldn’t she tell the world about who Jimmy’s real father was. Also if she really was getting payed by Jordan to keep quiet, who at the time was making millions from the NBA, why did Jimmy and his mom still live in a neighborhood surrounded by poverty. Lastly, if there was some logical reason why Jimmy’s mom kicked him out, it would be for something like her being on drugs or her not being able to take care of the both of them, not for some silly reason like “he looked like Michael Jordan.”
Although this conspiracy may or may not be true, you can’t deny the similarities between MJ and Jimmy Butler. The dates, the physical features, and most importantly, the mentality. Anyone who knew Michael knew that he never liked losing, that was just his mindset, his mentality. This mentality was so strong that it led to him arguably becoming the best basketball player to ever exist. Could such a competitive, determined, winning mentality really just die out, never to be seen again by his offspring? Well what if I were to tell you that it actually didn’t die out. What if there was a secret someone who inherited that mentality while MJs other kids didn’t. Could that secret someone be Jimmy Butler? Both are winners in their own right that happen to share a lot in common, but what if those similarities weren’t just by chance. What if those similarities were actually … genetic?
Truth Hughes – Saint Ignatius College Prep – DMSF Class of 2026
(Image credit to Mike Korzemba)