Post-retirement
After his third retirement, Michael Jordan assumed that he would be able to return to his front office position as Director of Basketball Operations with the Wizards. Jordan's previous tenure had produced mixed results and may have also influenced the trade of Richard "Rip" Hamilton for Jerry Stackhouse, although Jordan was not technically Director of Basketball Operations in 2002. On May 7, 2003, Wizards owner Abe Pollin fired Jordan from the role. Jordan later stated that he felt betrayed, and that if he had known he would be fired upon retiring, he never would have come back to play for the Wizards.
Over the next few years, Jordan played golf in celebrity charity tournaments and spent time with his family in Chicago. He also promoted his Jordan Brand clothing line and rode motorcycles. Since 2004, Jordan has owned Michael Jordan Motorsports, a professional closed-course motorcycle road racing team that competed with two Suzukis in the premier Superbike championship sanctioned by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) until the end of the 2013 season.
Charlotte Bobcats/Hornets
On June 15, 2006, Michael Jordan bought a minority stake in the Charlotte Bobcats (known as the Hornets since 2013), becoming the team's second-largest shareholder behind majority owner Robert L. Johnson. As part of the deal, Jordan took full control over the basketball side of the operation, with the title Managing Member of Basketball Operations. Despite his previous success as an endorser, Jordan made an effort not to be included in Charlotte's marketing campaigns. A decade earlier, he had made a bid to become part-owner of Charlotte's original NBA team, the Charlotte Hornets, but talks collapsed when owner George Shinn refused to give Jordan complete control of basketball operations.
In February 2010, it was reported that Jordan was seeking majority ownership of the Bobcats. As February wore on, it became apparent that Jordan and former Houston Rockets president George Postolos were the leading contenders for ownership of the team. On February 27, the Bobcats announced that Johnson had reached an agreement with Jordan and his group, MJ Basketball Holdings, to buy the team from Johnson pending NBA approval. On March 17, the NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved Jordan's purchase, making him the first former player to become the majority owner of an NBA team, and the league's only African-American majority owner.
23XI Racing
On September 21, 2020, Michael Jordan and NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin announced they would be fielding a NASCAR Cup Series team with Bubba Wallace driving, beginning competition in the 2021 season.[308] On October 22, the team's name was confirmed to be 23XI Racing (pronounced twenty-three eleven) and the team's entry would bear No. 23. After the team's inaugural season, it added a second car with No. 45, driven by Kurt Busch in 2022 and Tyler Reddick in 2023. Ty Gibbs, John Hunter Nemechek, and Daniel Hemric also drove for 23XI as substitute drivers during the 2022 season. The team fielded a third car, No. 67, driven by Travis Pastrana in the 2023 Daytona 500. Reddick won the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series regular season championship, the first for the team. 23XI Racing acquired a third charter from the defunct Stewart-Haas Racing, the No. 35 driven by Riley Herbst beginning in 2025.