Did former NBA star Michael Jordan turn down a $200 million offer to do a commercial with current NBA star LeBron James, saying he would "never [work] with this woke creep?" No, that's not true: This story came from a website that calls itself satirical and "fake news." A representative for Jordan told Lead Stories there was "no truth" to this.
The claim appeared in a post on Threads (archived here) on September 3, 2024. It read:
Michael Jordan turns down $200 million offer to do a commercial with LeBron James, 'Never with this woke creep'
READ HERE: buff.ly/4cJ8j...
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Thu Sep 5 14:29:17 2024 UTC)
The image with the post shows James and Jordan side by side, with the caption as a text overlay.
Lead Stories contacted Jordan, and on September 5, 2024, received an email from Jump Management, the "family and business office of Michael Jordan." The email response said:
There is absolutely no truth to this story.
A Google search found that the earliest version of this claim came from SpaceX Fanclub. The claim was made on their Facebook account on February 6, 2024 (archived here). The Facebook page's intro (archived here) reads:
We post SATIRE, nothing on this page is real.
Linked in the comments of this post was a link to the article on Esspots.com (archived here). In Esspots' About Us section is a paragraph about the content being "fake news":
Welcome to the US page of Esspots (A Subsidiary of SpaceXMania.com specializing in Satire and Parody News), your one-stop destination for satirical news and commentary about the United States of America. Our team of writers and editors is dedicated to bringing you the latest and greatest in fake news and absurdity, all with a healthy dose of humor and satire.
Lead Stories did a search using keywords on the Google News archive, visible here, which found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim (archived here).
Snopes fact checked a similar claim previously here.
More Lead Stories fact checks on claims regarding Michael Jordan are here.
