Michael Jordan #12

[almostdone]

I have a great story about that night in Orlando. A friend of mine, Tony Smith, was the official photographer of the Magic at the time. This was the first time that Jordan and the Bulls had come to Orlando. The media hype was huge but when Jordan didn't come out for a warm up a rumor started that he wasn't there and stayed back in Chicago.

After some more time the extra news coverage reporters started to leave thinking Jordan was a no show. Tony of course stayed being it was his job.

Jordan came out at game time with the number 12 on and the crowd slowly noticed it. There are very few mid game action shots from that game but Tony was lucky enough to snap a photo of Jordan taking a jump shot while being quadrupled covered. The picture shows Jordan high above the four defenders with his usual look of intensity and a great shot of the 12 on his jersey.

Tony knew this picture could be worth a ton of money to him so he kept it very close to him. He had made only 5 16 X 20 prints of it. He was friends with the owner of the Magic and talked him into getting all five prints signed by Jordan. One he gave to the owner of the Magic as a thank you, he gave one each to his two assistants and still had the other two. One is beautiful framed and matted and the other, ironically, he wants to sell. He also still has the original negative of the shot.

By the was Tony did almost half of the photographs for Upper Deck first basketball set in 91 including the back shot of card #1 Michael Jordan. If you look at the cards there is a high concentration of visiting uniforms with Orlando players in the shot. All of these were taken by my friend Tony Smith.

Drew