The Coin Toss That Changed Basketball History: How Portland Missed Out on Michael Jordan
It’s almost impossible to imagine basketball without Michael Jordan wearing a Bulls jersey. Yet, decades earlier, a single coin toss nearly changed that. Before the NBA Draft Lottery, fate ruled the draft — the league’s worst teams literally flipped a coin to determine who picked first. One toss in 1979 sent a 6-foot-9 phenom named Magic Johnson to Los Angeles and, in a strange twist, set off a chain of events that brought Jordan to Chicago five years later.
The Butterfly Effect of Losing Magic
Image via Wikimedia Commons/Lori Shepler, Los Angeles Times
In 1979, the Chicago Bulls and the Los Angeles Lakers ended up linked by a single coin flip. The Lakers had acquired the New Orleans Jazz’s first-round pick through an earlier trade, giving them a chance at a top prospect even though they were already a playoff team. The Bulls, struggling near the bottom of the standings, badly needed a future star. When the coin landed, it went the Lakers’ way. They used the pick to draft a 6-foot-9 point guard from Michigan State — Magic Johnson. Chicago took forward David Greenwood instead, who was a steady player but never a franchise changer.
Magic Johnson arrived in Los Angeles at the perfect moment. Paired with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he brought a new energy that fueled Showtime basketball and five championships. Chicago, meanwhile, trudged through mediocrity.
In hindsight, that losing streak was the best thing that could have happened to them. Had the Bulls won that 1979 coin toss and selected Magic, their record over the next few years likely would have been too good to draft Jordan. As Bulls executive Irwin Mandel later said, “We never would have had a bad enough record to draft Michael Jordan five seasons later.”
Sometimes losing turns out to be the biggest win of all.
The 1984 Draft: Luck Strikes Again
Image via Wikimedia Commons/United Press International
Fast-forward to 1984. The Bulls were one of the worst teams in the league, but not the worst. Houston and Portland had the top two picks after another pre-lottery coin flip. The Rockets selected Hakeem Olajuwon, the obvious choice. Portland, already stacked with guards like Clyde Drexler and Jim Paxson, went for center Sam Bowie instead of Jordan. This left Chicago with the third pick and a chance to grab the best basketball player of all time.
Bulls general manager Rod Thorn stayed in Chicago on draft day, watching nervously. The team’s scout, Mike Thibault, was confident that Jordan would become a perennial All-Star. Thorn listened, made the call, and Chicago’s future shifted forever. A young Bulls staffer named Keith Brown announced the pick in New York and marked the start of a dynasty that would redefine sports.
The Coin That Connected Two Legends
Looking back, that 1979 coin toss connects Magic Johnson’s Lakers and Michael Jordan’s Bulls in a way few fans realize. Magic turned the Lakers into a showtime spectacle that saved the NBA’s popularity in the early 1980s. A few years later, Jordan turned the Bulls into a global brand that took the league to another level. The two stars were destined to collide in the 1991 NBA Finals when the Lakers faced the Bulls, Magic faced Michael, and Jordan finally took the crown.
If that coin had landed differently, Magic might have been the one lifting banners in Chicago, and Jordan might have been somewhere else entirely. If one of the greatest what-ifs in sports history is anything to go by, sometimes, destiny really does come down to heads or tails.