For the past three years, Michael Jordan has had the honor of driving his NASCAR team’s #23 car at Bubba Wallace. Wallace, who joined Jordan in 2021, earned his first career win at Talladega Superspeedway and posted three top-5 and three top-10 finishes in Jordan’s first year as a member of the 23XI Racing team. He holds a unique place in history as the highest-ranking black driver in the Daytona 500 and has become one of the most popular and polarizing figures in the sport. Now he’s a new father. Wallace welcomed son Bex Hayden with his wife Amanda on September 29.
Wallace said that as a new father, Jordan watches him to make sure he gets enough sleep. “They keep asking me if I’m getting enough sleep, and to my surprise, we are. Bex sleeps well most nights.” Wallace said in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital. For Wallace, it’s one of the more gracious ways NASCAR’s NBA Hall of Famer handles top talent. On the other hand, working for Jordan comes with a lot of verbal abuse. “It’s competitive,” Wallace said of Jordan as a boss. “It’s very funny. You have to have a thick skin because he’s someone you can target and fight with. That’s how I grew up and I grew up, talking trash is half the game and he’s probably one of the best at it.”
During his NBA career, Jordan developed a reputation as one of the most combative and outspoken men in all of sports, and that extended to his opponents as well. Jordan was known for verbally destroying his teammates. In the hit ESPN documentary “The Last Dance,” the former Bulls star and his teammates recounted how Jordan threatened his younger teammates. Jordan justified treating these young teammates in the series as a way to win. “When people see that, they say, ‘Well, he wasn’t a good guy, maybe he was a tyrant!'” Jordan said in the documentary win, but I wanted to win, I hoped they would win and be part of from this.
One of Jordan’s other hosts even said that the NBA legend said Jordan was “horrible” for his sport. 23XI’s Tyler Reddick revealed on Fox Sports’ “Kevin Harvick Happy Hour” in September that Jordan sexually assaulted him while competing in the 2023 Dayton 500. “He (Jordan) turned to me and said, ‘Man, you got nothing to say. You’re terrible on the highway.” “He just shot me and I wasn’t expecting it. Reddick said. “When MJ tells you you’re not good enough, it’s easy to find motivation to improve.”Wallace adopted this approach as a member of Team Jordan to win in the competitive environment of NASCAR. Jordan, a former standout athlete, offered Wallace personal and professional advice, and they made every effort to compare their situations for strategic purposes.
Still, Wallace doubts Jordan knows about NASCAR as a sport. “What was it like for him to go through the league and try to find parallels with the situation here? Then you have to teach him about racing. Because he thinks he knows a lot. But there’s a lot to learn in this sport,” Wallace said. Wallace said he hasn’t played a round of golf in three years since he started working with Jordan.
“We like to talk about racing,” Wallace said of his relationship with Jordan. According to Wallace, he did not engage in any competitive activity involving betting of any kind with the NBA legend. Jordan had a reputation as a notorious gambler both during and after his basketball career. In fact, according to multiple sources, Jordan even bet his teammates on the outcome of a pre-recorded interactive contest played using the jumbotron in the Bulls’ home stadium during the game. Wallace doesn’t seem to know anything about this side of his boss. All Wallace knows is that Jordan is a great person to talk basketball with. Once at the team complex, one NBA team will receive priority access to play on television: the Charlotte Hornets of Jordan, previously owned but sold in August 2023.
“The Hornets games were always at the track because he was the owner for a while,” Wallace said. Jordan purchased the Charlotte franchise for $275 million in 2010. Jordan made a nice profit last year when the team was sold for $3 billion to a group led by Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall, and even remained a minority shareholder. But in 13 seasons under his leadership, the team went 423-600, made the playoffs just three times and never won a series. In the lockout-shortened 2011-2012 season, the then-Bobcats went 7-59, the worst record in NBA history.
Now 23XI Racing is Jordan’s largest sports team in the United States. Wallace will be under pressure to make sure things don’t end the way they did for the Hornets. Jackson Thompson is a sports reporter for Fox News Digital. He previously worked at ESPN and Business Insider. Jackson covered the Superbowl and NBA Finals and interviewed celebrities such as Usain Bolt, Rob Gronkowski, Jerry Rice, Troy Aikman, Mike Trout, David Ortiz and Roger Clemens.
