For those who don’t already know me, I’m probably not who you think I am. It’s important to begin with the fact that I’m 5’6 tall, with curly hair and light-brown skin. I was born around the time a man also named Michael Jordan was denied a spot on his varsity high school basketball team because at 5’11 he was considered too short (he later grew to be 6’6). So no, I wasn’t named after him. But he certainly became a big deal during my childhood, which made me locally famous in Huntsville, Alabama. So much that I’ve always signed my name with my middle initial, “B,” to differentiate myself. I mean, it was nice that folks remembered my name, but I wasn’t all that fond of someone else coming to mind when they learned it. The “B” made it mine. Until 2013.
Around December of that year, I started getting Michael B. Jordan’s emails. The other other one.
It started with the release of Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler’s debut film about the death of Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old man who was shot and killed by a police officer in an Oakland BART station on New Years’ Day, 2009. Before the film came out, whenever I got an email through my website’s contact form, it was usually a publicist pitching a story for Thrillist, where I was the founding Atlanta editor. But the more people saw the movie, the more people started taking an interest in the young actor who starred as Oscar Grant in it, and trying to get in contact with him. This led them, however, to me.
The thoughtfulness of Ahmad’s email stuck with me, and I wanted to respond to him, but I figured he might not be interested in receiving a wordy reply from some coincidental guy a decade older than the breakout actor he was looking for. I’d have written that I know what he means, and that I sometimes stop and think about how easily I could have easily been a victim of police violence, having lived my entire life in the South. Whenever I have such moments, I would have told him, they remind me of how lucky I feel to have a daughter, who was two years old when Ahmad sent this email, and a girlfriend, her mother, whom I would marry the following summer. I didn’t know Oscar Grant, but I could relate to him in an uncomfortable way.
That email was just the beginning. Michael Bakari Jordan’s star began to rise (my “B” stands for Burnett), and I began seeing him on covers of magazines like Essence, with Oprah, touted as the future of Hollywood. As a journalist, I see that sort of thing happen a lot — an actor being positioned as the next major movie star before the general public has a chance to weigh in. Plus his next big role would be as Human Torch in Fantastic Four, so I figured it was a little early to assume his status. Three months after his appearance in that big-budget Marvel movie — one not-so-loved by audiences — he starred in Creed, which was much better received. Since then, nothing has been the same. For him, and for me.
It’s a deja vu of sorts, thinking you’ve finally established your own name in your field, only to see it co-opted by younger, admittedly more handsome and successful person with your same name. But it’s also very cool to have such a person out there representing this unofficial Jordan brand with which I’ve found myself associated (the other Michael B. Jordan has also addressed that whole name situation). My name isn’t Ted Bundy, or Paris Dennard, for that matter — I’ve quite enjoyed watching the other Michael B. Jordan become one of Hollywood’s hottest A-listers, even as it has meant that I’ve started calling myself “Mike” just to carve out a little space of my own.
Not a day goes by that I don't get a Michael Jordan joke, one way or the other. It fluctuates based on where I am. Usually it defaults to the basketball Jordan and yes, it gets quite tiresome, but I like to be a good sport about it and play along, even laughing at the corniest, most repeated jokes. I can’t blame the strangers who crack wise; they enjoy the humor in the moment like I do, but they probably never consider that I've heard “I thought you’d be taller” every day, which I have. And it’s probably how the other Michael B. Jordan’s fans never consider how many people tell him "I'm your No. 1 fan!!" every day.
My favorite Michael Jordan story involves being mistaken for the basketball MJ back in 2012. I was invited by the Atlanta Hawks' press team to cover the opening of a bar named Red inside Philips Arena (now State Farm Arena). This was when I was full-time at Thrillist, which back then had an absolutely crazy policy about scooping other local media on any story a city editor wanted to run. So I got permission to enter the stadium through the media entrance at, like, 4 a.m. or some super early hour, just to make sure I had the story before everybody else.
When I arrived in the early morning hours, I was greeted by two sweet older black ladies, who were smiling joyfully as they asked my name. I didn’t know why until I told them my name. Their smiles evaporated. It dawned on me that they’d been sitting there anticipating a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet a sports legend, and had no reason to think it might not be tall/dark/handsome MJ — basketball MJ — coming to the private entry of Philips Arena that early that morning. What other Michael Jordan does that? Well, as it turns out, me, a short, light-beer-drinking MJ reporting for Thrillist does that. The security ladies, now frowning, didn't mask their disappointment. I quietly kept it moving, shot my shots (photography, not basketball), and left. They still looked angry on my way out.
(I was also completely freaked out the first time I saw that Michael Jordan commercial on ESPN. That's seriously been my life. I literally wondered for the first five seconds if my college roommates had hacked my cable to prank me.)
Having the @michaelbjordan Twitter handle has been quite a ride as well; mainstream publications, who seem to hire people too tired or lazy to confirm celebrity social media accounts, mention me all the time (the other Michael B. Jordan can be found at @michaelb4jordan, where he has 1.03 million followers to my 31,000). I also know he, if no one else, knows who I am: my wife used to be the entertainment editor for Upscale magazine; she interviewed him once and told him her husband was the guy with the Twitter handle. He started following me after that.
Because Twitter is public and impersonal by nature, I get the kind of notes there that quickly escape memory after I’ve read them. From what I can tell through the mistaken emails I get at my own website (at least 500, probably lots more), the other Michael B. Jordan gets a range of requests. There are your basic famous-person asks: be my pen pal; send an autographed pic; talk to my classroom. Then there are notes that are very specific to the other Michael B. Jordan, like ones asking to workout tips, or a particularly memorable one from a teenager suggesting, quite seriously, that the other Michael B. Jordan date her mom.
Some are silly, like an interview request from a kid at a Christian school in Australia, who hilariously an asked if he could “fight Killmonger coz I'm actually Chadwick Boseman,” before ending with “psych! Tricked you boy.” Some are from folks who should probably know better (like student journalists at a certain Ivy League school’s political magazine). Some pitch investment opportunities, writing in a tone that would make you think they honestly expect a reply. And a whole lot of folks ask to audition their talents for the other Michael B. Jordan, some having done enough research to know the name of the woman who runs his production company, but not enough to know that they’d reached the wrong Gmail account.
Every now and then I get emails from people with real problems, who are hoping to find, well… hope, if not help, in a response from someone they admire — someone who appears within reach, even if that’s not the reality. And I can’t help but feel for these people who probably aren’t interested in hearing much of what I’d have to say, even if I am reading their emails.
There was Brenda, whose daughter had been on dialysis for two years, and whose husband was recovering from a kidney transplant. In her note, after asking the other Michael B. Jordan to visit her house in North Carolina, she wrote, “I know you are a busy man. It don't hurt to dream big, it might come true.”
There was Cavel, a young lady whose three-sentence fan letter included the heartbreakingly incomplete line, “I know u can never consider a Zambian girl as a fun…” I thought about connecting her to Kirstine, a self-described “white European, with no African genes, as far as I know, so my opinion can easily become less insightful.” I assume she meant by being white, her opinion automatically mattered less or was somewhat irrelevant, which is, of course, quite ironic. Kirstine somewhat incoherently made an interesting point about race and colorism, noting that in America “black becomes pretty, when it’s not 100 percent, though we can clearly see, that 100 percent African is pretty (Lupita Nyong’o), we just lack exposure of this.” She concluded her email by asking “Is my question even relevant?”
Donte from Brooklyn sent an email that has been hard to forget. He claimed to have been a friend of Kalief Browder, a New York City teen who was accused of stealing a backpack and jailed at the notorious Rikers Island prison for three years without being convicted of a crime; he died by suicide in 2015, two years after the charges against him were dismissed. I was inclined to believe that Donte knew Kalief because of the detailed way he wrote — his description of his experience fighting the criminal justice system seemed too colored by frustration to be fictional. Whether or not he was innocent, he said he had got big goals and dreams that he hadn’t accomplished “yet” in his life. All he was asking for, in this email at least, was for the other Michael B. Jordan to “shine some light” on his situation so that a judge he was due to face didn’t treat him unfairly because of his “age and skin tone.”
Then there was Marvin, the first not-fan to whom I ever really wanted to respond and send encouragement. His email, which I received in February, had three lines that stood out: “My family doesn't believe in me but it’s OK…” “I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, matter of fact I'm less fortunate, borderline low-class…” “Please man help me change my situation.”
If I had to choose one person who has emailed me to talk to, I’d chose Marvin. And I’d tell him first that I wasn’t the other Michael B. Jordan but he should listen to me because I happen to have a famous godfather who has always been my hero and mentor. I would have told him that I don’t know what it’s like to be both a black man and a leading man in Hollywood, but I know what it’s like to look up to such a figure, hoping he can help you to see through tough times. Sure, the other Michael B. Jordan can’t yet be compared to my godfather, but you can tell by his career moves that he has big goals and dreams to one day occupy the same space: that rare air (no pun intended), in which you can always feel like you’re walking in the shoes of excellence — your own.
Marvin, if you read this, if there’s one bit of advice I think might help, it’s to look within. See yourself as the hero, because I’m guessing that’s what you’re seeing in the other Michael B. Jordan’s movies, what made you want to talk to the “real” guy. But the more you get to know yourself, I bet the more you’ll realize that you’ve got everything it takes not only to inspire but build yourself up. You can do it. And you don’t have to wait for any famous person’s cosign.
But even if you’re open to that kind of message, I get that it probably doesn’t carry the same buzz to hear it from me instead of the other Michael B. Jordan. And I’m cool with that, because I understand the confusion. I’m not who you thought I was. That doesn’t mean I’m not incredibly handsome, charming, and talented. It just means I’m a journalist who needs to exercise more, and even then I certainly won’t come close to resembling the guy you tried to reach. At least now you can literally say that you’ve got Michael B. Jordan’s support.
