Michael Jordan

In the summer of 1993, Jordan's high-flying career came to a crashing halt with an event that was to forever change his life. In the very early morning hours of July 23, 1993, Jordan's father, James Jordan, was making a long drive from the North Carolina coast, coming back from a friend's funeral, when he stopped on a roadside in Lumberton, North Carolina. There he hoped to grab a few minutes of rest before driving the last 130 miles home. But it was not to be. He was set upon by a pair of robbers, shot once in the chest, and killed. The 18-year-old murderers did not know who their victim was; they wanted nothing more than his car and whatever valuables it might contain. They stripped his car, and dumped his body in a creek near where they shot him, and there he was found 11 days later.

After the death of his father, the steam went out of Jordan's career. "When my father died," he explained to Bondy in the Daily News "there was a different emphasis on everything." Jordan no longer felt the same fire to play basketball. He announced his retirement, and then went into seclusion. "There's nothing left to prove," he told Filip Bondy in the New York Daily News.