Mychal Thompson: Michael Jordan's Mom Told Him to Stop Spelling Name Like Mine
If 10-year-old Michael Jordan would have had his way, we'd be spelling his name Mychal.
ESPN's Ramona Shelburne recently revealed that Jordan was so inspired by former NBA forward Mychal Thompson changing the spelling of his name that he began to do so himself. Jordan's mother put a stop to it.
"He saw the spelling of my name in print. He was obviously watching me play as a Laker, and he thought it was a cool way to spell his name. He started writing his name," Thompson told Mark Medina of USA Today. "But then his mother saw it on a piece of paper and said, 'You can't. You're not allowed to spell your name that way.' She stopped him from doing it.
"That's pretty impressive he saw my name in print and decided he wanted to spell his name that way too. I've had a number of parents in the last 30-40 years see my name in print like that and call their kids 'Mychal' and spell the way I spell it. It's a great compliment."
Thompson, the father of Golden State Warriors guard Klay Thompson, changed his name at age 20 to differentiate the spelling. He told Medina he originally began spelling it that way in high school:
"When I was in high school. I saw my name being written in print. They were writing it as ‘Mike, Michael or Mikey.’ It’s such a common name. So I figured, ‘If they’re going to say ‘Mike’ or ‘Michael,’ I’m going to change the spelling of my name so people will know it’s me. I’m the only one who spelled it this way. So I started spelling it in different ways to see which one would look the best. I tried, ‘M-I-K-A-L’ and ‘M-Y-K-A-L’ and ‘M-Y-C-H-A-L.’ I thought the last one one looked the best. So I went with that I that. Then I went to the Bahamas and changed it legally (at 20 years old). I told my father I wanted to change it legally. He said, ‘Okay, you can do it so long as you don’t change the last name.'"
As for the Jordan-Thompson connection, there is something about the math that isn't adding up. Thompson is only eight years older than Jordan. He didn't join the Lakers until 1987, three years into Jordan's NBA career. By that time, Jordan was already a national brand and probably not thinking about any sort of name change.
To fit the timeline presented by Shelburne's original story, Jordan would had to have seen Thompson play when he was at the University of Minnesota. That's certainly possible, given that Thompson was a star at Minnesota and wound up being the No. 1 overall pick in 1978.
But this is definitely one of those old, retold stories where what actually happened got lost in translation somewhere.
