Barack Obama Laments Michael Jordan Not Supporting Democratic Political Causes

Still, the basketball legend’s penchant for letting his talent speak for him wasn’t good enough for Obama, who said he wished Jordan would have inserted himself into social activism by, at the very least, endorsing a Democrat in his native state of North Carolina three decades ago.

As outlined in ESPN’s Jordan documentary “The Last Dance,” currently airing on the network, Jordan refused to endorse Democrat Harvey Gantt, who was challenging incumbent Republican Jesse Helms in North Carolina’s Senate race in 1990.

In the 1995 book “Second Coming,” author Sam Smith wrote that Jordan was asked to endorse Gantt but declined.

Jordan was quoted as saying, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”

“He wasn’t into politics, he explained, didn’t really know the issues,” Smith wrote.

Smith said Jordan made the “sneakers” comment to a pair of his Bulls teammates.

The Hall of Famer addressed the quote, and whether he needed to correct it, Sunday in the ESPN documentary series.

“I don’t think that statement needs to be corrected because I said it in jest on a bus with Horace Grant and Scottie Pippen,” Jordan said.

“It was thrown off the cuff. My mother asked to do a PSA for Harvey Gantt, and I said, ‘Look, Mom, I’m not speaking out of pocket about someone that I don’t know. But I will send a contribution to support him.’ Which is what I did,” he added.

On being compared to activist boxer Muhammad Ali, Jordan said: “I do commend Muhammad Ali for standing up for what he believed in. But I never thought of myself as an activist. I thought of myself as a basketball player.”

“I wasn’t a politician when I was playing my sport. I was focused on my craft. Was that selfish? Probably. But that was my energy. That’s where my energy was,” he said.

But Obama, who resided in Chicago and represented Illinois in the Senate before being elected president, was displeased.

“I’ll be honest, when it was reported that Michael said ‘Republicans buy sneakers too,’ for somebody who was at that time preparing for a career in civil rights law and public life, and knowing what Jesse Helms stood for, you would have wanted to see Michael push harder on that,” the former president said in “The Last Dance.”