The finishing season is here and you would know where to expect Michael Jordan to be. For the last few years, the NBA champion has set sail on his $8 million-worth yacht, Crew 23, part-taking in any fishing tournaments the season has to offer. A feat really for Jordan who was once scared of water bodies. But challenge and defeat only seem to have pushed MJ forward.

In June, MJ’s crew took part in the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament but came home without any prize money. Using Catch 23, an 82-foot vessel, the crew brought in just 400 pounds of fish throughout the weekend, one of which included a 25-pound dolphin by the NBA champion himself. However, that wouldn’t be enough. With the winning team going 516-pound, the Crew 23 missed on a total purse of $7,562,700 among 302 boats.

So now the crew is back, hoping for a better catch as they turn their attention to the 51st annual White Marlin Open in Maryland. The five-day event is billed as the world’s largest billfish tournament as per the Mocoshow and MJ has marked his attendance for this year.

At Ocean City this season, more than 400 boats have been registered after last year’s world-record individual payout. Tournament director Madelyne Motsko said in a statement, “Heading into our 51st year, our momentum remains strong following $10.5 million in prize money last year, including a world-record individual payout of $6.23 million.”
MJ has taken part in similar events since 2019 but hasn’t managed a win and that only seems to have kept him going. But while MJ treads the field with passion, it was once an impossible vision for a young him.

Michael Jordan and the two events that caused the phobia

At the age of seven, Jordan’s friend lost his life after an accident in the sea. He spoke about the tragedy in Playboy magazine in 1992. He said: “I went swimming with a very good friend one day, and we were having fun catching waves. At one point, the current was so strong that it swallowed him, and he grabbed onto me. It’s called ‘the death lock’ when someone can die. I practically had to break his hand. He was going to take me with him.”

If that ordeal was not enough, Michael Jordan himself had a drowning scare 4 years later. The Chicago Bulls legend was at the baseball camp at the age of 11, thus Jordan was suffering from hydrophobia. He even highlighted the issue in his autobiography, ‘For the Love of the Game: My Story’. “I’m not going in the water anymore,” he declared. “Everyone has a phobia about something. I stay away from water.”
Eventually, he was helped a lot by his wife Prieto, who was born in Cuba, a country surrounded by water bodies. She even got him hooked on sailing and has been loving it for the past few years.