The Internet Goes Bananas Over Michael Jordan’s Viral and Somewhat Odd Grandpa Behavior

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hey there, folks.

00:00:02
Speaker 2: It is Monday, February sixteenth, and Michael Jordan won the Daytona five hundred yesterday as a team owner and immediately went viral for his celebration with the six year old son of the driver who won. And with that, welcome to this bizarre episode of Amy and TJ. Michael Jordan was trending this morning.

00:00:27
Speaker 1: Robes.

00:00:27
Speaker 2: I knew he had won the Daytona five hundred. Big deal, right, This's the greatest school player in history winning championships in NASCAR. But that's not why he was going viral, Robes. This is a interesting story, I should say.

00:00:39
Speaker 3: Yes, if you read some of the headlines, they're basically taking some of the comments that people are making to this video that went viral that shows Michael Jordan celebrating and is standing right behind the sun. Like you said, the six year old son of Tyler Redick Bo Reddick. They, by the way we should mention, seemingly have been to like hanging out for years now. He's familiar with this family, so there's a closeness to them. But when you see the video of Michael Jordan, he looks like he is pinching the butt or pulling the shirt of Bo Reddick in several motions and then scratches his leg. But it looks weird when you're watching it. It looks maybe, dare I say, possibly inappropriate.

00:01:33
Speaker 2: Folks are using the word inappropriate. They are using all kinds of words about saying, now, Michael Jordan has is on camera inappropriately interacting and touching a six year old boy. That is a big deal to make a statement like that. But the video is there. But the thing is, please please repast headlines, and I hope you repass the headline of this episode, and I hope you don't. Just listen to us. Go and listen. It's everywhere you can watch it. But another one of these cases ropes with as a video we all see and people interpret it differently. People are interpreting it, interpreting it differently. If I had seen this, I told you out of context of the headlines, I'm not sure what type of alarm bels it would have set off for me.

00:02:16
Speaker 1: What about you?

00:02:17
Speaker 3: I just would have said, that's weird, it's bizarre and it seems strange. I don't know if it's I don't know if it's inappropriate. I don't know the relationship Michael Jordan has with this family and with this kid in particular. But I do think that sadly, in this day and age, when you have a grown man touching a child that isn't their own below the belt in any way, even if it's just in jest or teasing, or if it's an absolutely innocent gesture, it can be viewed as inappropriate and wrong.

00:02:53
Speaker 2: Even so, we haven't heard, we should say, I haven't heard at least of this recording from Michael or his team or anyone to comment on this. And I don't know if we even will or if we need to robes, but you have up and we're just gonna give you an idea of the reaction. Of course, it's social media for the most part, but some of the things are you know, it seems like typical social media. I'm not I haven't read one yet that maybe go hmmm, I didn't think about it that way.

00:03:21
Speaker 3: So there is one that I read that made me think I didn't think about it that way, but I don't think that it's true. So the ones that you're gonna see that are gonna pop up. Mj ruined his entire legacy in twenty three seconds.

00:03:32
Speaker 1: Somebody put that in a headline.

00:03:34
Speaker 4: Someone put that in a headline.

00:03:35
Speaker 2: And all they did was plucked a comment. They go through, they find the worst comment somebody made about a story and then take it and put it in the headline in quotation marks, and that gives them a pass. But so don't believe a lot of the headlines you will read.

00:03:48
Speaker 1: But the video is out there.

00:03:49
Speaker 4: Correct.

00:03:49
Speaker 3: So some folks say NBA legend Michael Jordan bizarrely tugs at a child's shirt at a NASCAR race.

00:03:57
Speaker 1: Bizarrely tugs.

00:03:58
Speaker 4: Okay, I think that's fair.

00:04:00
Speaker 3: Why was Michael Jordan acting like Joe Biden with a child after his NASCAR victory? Okay, that was another one. There have been some other they made It's not okay, but making references to Jeffrey Epstein because his middle name is Jeffrey who. A lot of people took that and ran with it. Mj What are you doing? Dog? What is Michael Jordan doing? Here's the one that made it. I would have to go back and look again. But it didn't seem as though the child was uncomfortable. Because many people have said that ice from celebration from the Gatorade bucket got stuck in people's shirts, so it looked like he was tugging on the shirt to get ice out of the back of.

00:04:42
Speaker 4: Boreddick's shirt, So it was practical.

00:04:44
Speaker 1: Even there, people.

00:04:45
Speaker 3: Were saying, in defense of Michael Jordan, it looks like he's getting ice that was stuck out of the little boy's shirt. I didn't see anything falling, and the little boy didn't seem like he was uncomfortable and needed help getting ice out of the back of a shirt, which anyone who has had ice down their shirt knows you're immediately trying to pull it.

00:05:01
Speaker 1: Out, so react like that.

00:05:02
Speaker 4: So I think that's a viable excuse.

00:05:05
Speaker 3: But some people have tried to suggest that that might have been what Michael Jordan was doing.

00:05:09
Speaker 2: Okay, your first look at it, you're gonna say that's weird. Your second look at it, you're gonna have the headlines in the back of your mind, and then by the time you look at it the third time, you're gonna go, wait a minute, maybe he's just tugging at the shirt, and then you'll see, oh, he's probably just being playful with a kid he knows, and that's what we need to go I suppose next robes is because Tyler Reddick has been driving for years for Michael Jordan's racing team. He has known this kid. He's seen this kid grow up a little bit, you could argue. And there are other videos out here of him celebrating with this kid and being very playful and even touchy, and the kid clearly is comfortable and knows Michael Jordan.

00:05:49
Speaker 3: Yes, even though he might not know Michael Jordan the way we all know Michael Jordan, because he's known him probably his whole life as just you know, a friend, right exactly. But I also think it's important were talking about looking at Michael Jordan as a human.

00:06:03
Speaker 4: He has five children, so this is a man who's comfortable with children.

00:06:07
Speaker 3: I mean, they're grown children now, but he's got three children with his first wife and twin daughters with his current wife. He has one grandchild. So this is somebody who has been a fatherly figure and even a grandfatherly figure for years.

00:06:20
Speaker 4: I do think we.

00:06:21
Speaker 3: Have to absolutely take all of that into consideration when you're talking about the context of the video we're seeing.

00:06:28
Speaker 1: I do think that's important.

00:06:29
Speaker 2: You even said before we started here, you said, look, this was a thirty two year old man doing this or something might appear differently. Again, I don't know if look we're bringing up that this is out there, but I from where I sit, didn't feel like Michael Jordan need to be put under any additional scrutiny for this video, like we need to get to the bottom of something or we need answers. I don't know his relationship with this kid, but from that video I saw and from previous videos, they're close. You want to go back into now robes. Should we be having a debate about what's okay and who should be touching what kid? No, because we all understand if that's my kid or if that's your kid, and the kids that age, there are a certain number of adults who have have license to do whatever with the kid because you trust that person, their trust that you talked about pinching your kids.

00:07:20
Speaker 3: To this day, I told something, they get annoyed by it, and maybe it is inappropriate for me as their mother, But sometimes I just see them as these cute little babies and I still pinch them. I have grabbed their butts and they're like mom, and I'm like, you're right, I shouldn't do.

00:07:34
Speaker 4: That, but it's just they're so cute, you just wanna It's just a way.

00:07:37
Speaker 3: It's it's a it's a way to basically, I don't know, just connect with your kids in a cute, maternal way, paternal way, whatever you want to call it. But it is a sign of the times, because yeah, we're at a place in society where teachers can no longer hug their students. You know, when we were growing up that was perfectly acceptable. You cannot physically touch a child, period if you were not related to them, and certainly if you're in any sort of professional setting, it's just not it's not acceptable, and you're opening yourself up for this type of commentary or even worse allegations.

00:08:15
Speaker 2: About teachers and all that stuff is right. But also, I mean, you can give whatever adult license to do whatever with your child if you want to. Now, if somebody from the outside seeing this and don't think that's okay, you can view it that way. But if bo Reddgg's dad is okay with his kid being playful with this adult or that adult, I got nothing to say about it. Hell, Robed, you brought up what we used to do back in the day, and what's Okay. Now, my neighbors when I was growing up had licensed to give me a whooping, like my parents allowed that. They come home from work and here I just got my butt whooped. They would say no. They wouldn't say to the other parent, how dare you touch my child? They say what did he do?

00:08:59
Speaker 4: Exactly?

00:09:00
Speaker 3: I mean no? When I was in elementary school and it was a Catholic school, but my brother got spankings like there was corporal punishment in the nineteen seventies and eighties in the school that I went to, in the Catholic school I went to in Saint Louis, Missouri. And my parents, again, they weren't upset. They said, what did you do? Same exact thing.

00:09:21
Speaker 2: Isn't this just a bottom line of us viewing something without the proper context of the relationship. Yes, And isn't it possible and maybe even likely? There was nothing to this but innocent back and forth, innocent playfulness between a guy who is very close to that family, And isn't it possible? Robes that we see and people want to think, say, he's pinching his butt, he looks like he's also just pulling at his shirt.

00:09:45
Speaker 4: So it's funny you say that.

00:09:47
Speaker 3: I definitely at first thought he was grabbing his butt, which I also was like, eh, I do that to my.

00:09:51
Speaker 1: Kids, and we say grabbing it, pinching is pitching.

00:09:54
Speaker 4: Grabbing sounds sexual.

00:09:55
Speaker 1: It wasn't.

00:09:56
Speaker 3: It was just pinching, playfully pinching his butt in celebration succession, like the way you would do it playfully.

00:10:03
Speaker 2: You're pulling it something almost yet, But when.

00:10:05
Speaker 4: You said grabbing the shirt or I was like, oh, it could be that too. You can't.

00:10:08
Speaker 3: I cannot tell whether or not he's got a little butt in his hand, a little cheek in his hand, or if it's just the shirt.

00:10:14
Speaker 4: I can't tell an either way.

00:10:17
Speaker 3: You know, I don't think that I would have jumped to any sort of conclusion that it was anything other than playful and sweet.

00:10:25
Speaker 2: I just that's where my head was. And the lines by him ruining his legacy and it's over for him. What I think somebody put in a headline he should be in jail because somebody wrote it on social media.

00:10:39
Speaker 1: I mean, well, there it is.

00:10:41
Speaker 2: Straight Michael Joan under fire over gesture towards child during Daytona five hundred victory celebration.

00:10:47
Speaker 1: Quote straight to jail.

00:10:50
Speaker 3: Wow.

00:10:51
Speaker 4: You know what I do.

00:10:52
Speaker 3: I do think we have talked and we'll probably keep talking about the impact and effect of Jeffrey Epstein.

00:10:58
Speaker 4: I think that in the.

00:10:59
Speaker 3: Way of all of these constant headlines, people assume the worst now and they are so afraid of anything that could even be considered inappropriate when it comes to men and women. Now, if this was a woman doing it, would it be different.

00:11:17
Speaker 1: Pension the little boys, but pension the little girls. But I mean, this is uh, this is a non issue.

00:11:24
Speaker 4: I think it's a non issue if it was a woman.

00:11:27
Speaker 1: Damn.

00:11:28
Speaker 2: I am trying to find a scenario here, because if there was a sixty three year old woman doing this, I certainly am with you there.

00:11:35
Speaker 4: Your little grandma was just yeah, you'd be like, ohlokok, she's just like.

00:11:38
Speaker 3: Swatting them on the back. Pension is whatever. No one would say anything if that was a woman.

00:11:46
Speaker 1: Wow.

00:11:47
Speaker 2: But stay here, because Robes, you just brought up something that made me think of something else. Meaning this is not the first time we have seen this from Michael George to your point, Robes, we're going to talk about now a sign of the time, stare we continue here on this Monday, February sixteen, Michael Jordan won another championship, went viral for something else, though, on the same day, a bizarre story robes. I don't if you had to guess, do you think this is going to go much further than it's gone? People saw it, going to talk about it, debate about it a little bit, and this will be the end. Do you think he needs to address it?

00:12:35
Speaker 4: I certainly hope it doesn't go further.

00:12:37
Speaker 3: If he addressed it, he should only do it in a very playful way, or maybe even you know, Bo's father could do it in a very playful way.

00:12:47
Speaker 4: I think that'd be the best thing.

00:12:48
Speaker 3: Like y'all are hilarious, you know, and whatever they want to say, however they want to do it, I think they could make light of it and have some fun with it, and then.

00:12:55
Speaker 4: It would be completely gone.

00:12:56
Speaker 3: And I do think it would be best if it came from Tyler reddickh' you know what.

00:13:00
Speaker 1: You say that and then you said the mom.

00:13:02
Speaker 2: If it came from the mom, everybody will listen to mom exactly exactly.

00:13:06
Speaker 3: And look, obviously, I just when you showed me some of the other videos of Michael Jordan with the Reddick family, and specifically with Boreddick. It just put it into the proper context and made a whole lot of sense.

00:13:18
Speaker 2: Okay, now everybody is probably gonna be able to remember. You might know these You can sing along to this song and you probably haven't heard it in a long long time. The lyrics went, sometimes I dream that he is me. You've got to see. That's how I wish to be. Doom doo, doom doom doom. I wish I move, I misshot. I wish I greve like Mike, if I could be like Mike. We all remember that song from that classic Gatorade commercial decades ago. In that iconic commercial robes one of the images that will stay in your head. Michael Jordan is this song is playing, is on a basketball court outside guarding a little kid, maybe younger than both repeatedly patted his button, repeatedly.

00:14:11
Speaker 1: Patting his bait.

00:14:13
Speaker 2: No, no, it's it's set up in a way to be fun and he's being playful with a kid.

00:14:17
Speaker 1: To your point. In Times of Change, we highlighted it.

00:14:20
Speaker 4: We would never put on a commercial edited.

00:14:24
Speaker 2: It's one of the most iconic images of that iconic commercial. He is on a court guarding a kid and just kind of just playful tapping him repeatedly on his backside while the kid is dribbling the basketball.

00:14:36
Speaker 3: Maybe someone should find that video of that game, put it up side by side and say, y'all are crazy having fun?

00:14:43
Speaker 4: Right, I haven't seen it, because that's really interesting.

00:14:46
Speaker 2: As soon as I pull it up, you're gonna go, oh, okay, that commercial. Oh I forgot about that one. It's just to your point, the sign of the times, how they were willing to put that out as a commercial and highlight him doing this, and now he's doing it in.

00:14:58
Speaker 1: Real life, playful with a kid. People. He went viral, you.

00:15:02
Speaker 3: Know, and the kid doesn't even flinch. Like That's another thing. I was looking at the kids reaction. I think, look, when you're when there's even investigations into if something was inappropriate or not, you have the therapist and psychologists talking to the kids, and really, here we have the video.

00:15:17
Speaker 4: In real time.

00:15:18
Speaker 3: Bo Reddick doesn't even badenn eyelash, like, he doesn't.

00:15:21
Speaker 4: Even he didn't even turn around to the point.

00:15:23
Speaker 3: I think that's why Michael Jordan kind of brushed the back of his leg like teasing, like his attention.

00:15:28
Speaker 4: He wasn't getting his attention.

00:15:30
Speaker 2: Oh I got robes that That'll tell you everything you need to know about how close they are.

00:15:34
Speaker 1: He was ignoring Michael Jordan.

00:15:36
Speaker 4: I know, I was thinking about that.

00:15:37
Speaker 3: I was like, clearly, the six year old does not know what's actually happening or who is actually behind him.

00:15:43
Speaker 4: The rest of us would have like one touch. Oh my god, Michael Jordan.

00:15:47
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think that's really interesting when you look at the when you look at Bo's physical reaction to Jordan playfully touching him or just whatever, swatting him on the back, pulling his shirt however we want to describe it doesn't flinch.

00:16:02
Speaker 1: You don't remember that.

00:16:02
Speaker 4: Oh my god, that is so funny.

00:16:05
Speaker 2: This is the most iconic commercial, maybe of his entire career, and Michael Jordan is on the plate.

00:16:10
Speaker 1: How old that kid?

00:16:11
Speaker 3: Let me see, Oh, it's the exact same age as Bo Riddick, Like he's like Reddick, He's like six years.

00:16:16
Speaker 2: Old, literally popping this kid repeatedly on the butt in a Gatorade commercial that was highly edited and approved, and it is one of the most I first think, Pop, how the.

00:16:25
Speaker 4: Hell did you remember that? I don't know how do you remember that? When was that?

00:16:29
Speaker 3: When was that commercial era? Who knows the fact that you can remember that? I mean that was a five seconds.

00:16:36
Speaker 1: It says nineteen ninety two.

00:16:39
Speaker 4: Your brain again should be studied.

00:16:41
Speaker 2: It does weird things, but I oh swear, but just to think he's pad in his killing a butt.

00:16:47
Speaker 4: In a commercial put that up in sad.

00:16:48
Speaker 3: Oh, look y'all are making, you know, a big deal about something that Jordan has playfully and gleefully been doing for.

00:16:56
Speaker 4: Probably years and celebrated for right.

00:16:58
Speaker 3: And I wouldn't be surprised if he kids or even his grand This is what dad does, is what pop does.

00:17:04
Speaker 2: They shouldn't comment on it because they different, But folk who just wanted to bring this up as a matter of this has been a part of the conversation today.

00:17:12
Speaker 1: Strangely, but rogues.

00:17:14
Speaker 2: We all have different relationships with kids, And you've even talked about not being touchy feely. Some parents a little more touchy feely. Grandparents can be a certain way. It's all a matter of comfort in that particular setting, with whatever the parents of that kid are comfortable with.

00:17:29
Speaker 1: And that's just.

00:17:29
Speaker 4: Bottom line, Yeah, exactly.

00:17:31
Speaker 3: And we hadn't heard anything from the Redicks, and if we do have a feeling it would be in complete support.

00:17:37
Speaker 2: Of Michael Jordan's all right, well, folks, we appreciate you, as always spending some time here with us.

00:17:41
Speaker 1: My dear Amy Robock, I'm TJ. Holms. Thunk yell soon