Should Michael Jordan Be Worried About Vanity Fair’s Tiger Piece?

Mark Seal‘s “The Temptation of Tiger Woods” piece in the new issue of Vanity Fair provides just as many down-and-dirty details as you’d expect from a Tiger exposé at this point. There’s the revelation that members of Tiger Wood‘s inner circle didn’t just know of his affairs, they helped cover them up. There’s the depressing accounts of Earl Woods‘ alleged womanizing and bouts with alcoholism. And, there’s this, which takes the cake for “most sordid detail nobody really needed to know about.”

But a detail that almost gets lost in the shuffle is the connection between Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, and the effect it may have had on Woods’ moral compass:

“When Tiger showed up in Vegas, he was always with Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley,” according to Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Norm Clarke. Years earlier, however, John Merchant had warned Woods to avoid Jordan and Barkley, saying of Jordan, “Stay away from that son of a bitch, because he doesn’t have anything to offer to the fucking world in which he lives except playing basketball.”

There is very little evidence given in the preview of the story that MJ gave Woods advice of any kind regarding his extra-martial affairs. There isn’t even any evidence that he knew about it at all (although this Fox News headline would have you think differently).

But it could signal the beginning of a more startling event: the taking off of the kid-gloves regarding the media’s relationship with Jordan. It’s no secret that Jordan has his dark side: problems with gambling, alleged infidelity, and an uncomfortably competitive disposition that made him the best player on the court, but kind of a dick off of it. Very rarely is this side of Jordan discussed, largely because of the media’s reluctance to cast the most important basketball player of all time in a negative light.

The piece also raises questions about Jordan’s almost-appearance at Woods’ famous apology press conference. Was he hoping to head off some negative press? Did Jordan, the ex-most-famous-athlete on the planet still living in the fast lane, help build up Tiger’s false sense of “entitlement” regarding the dicier trappings of fame?