Michael Jordan's Lucky Shorts Changed NBA Fashion Forever

Michael Jordan wore his University of North Carolina practice shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform for every single game of his 15-year NBA career. The shorts were from UNC's 1982 national championship team—the title won on Jordan's iconic game-winning shot—and he believed they were lucky. The problem was physics: the Bulls' standard-issue shorts in the mid-1980s were the same short style that had been standard in basketball for decades, and Jordan's UNC shorts peeked out beneath them. His solution was simple: request longer game shorts from the Bulls equipment staff. Jordan's longer shorts—worn to hide a superstition—changed basketball fashion permanently. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, players across the league adopted the look. By 1991, when Michigan's "Fab Five" featured future NBA stars Chris Webber and Juwan Howard wearing baggy shorts past their knees, they weren't being avant-garde—they were, as they openly admitted, "trying to be like Mike." Today, the short-shorts of the pre-Jordan era are unimaginable in the NBA. A superstition born from a 19-year-old's lucky college shorts revolutionized how basketball players dress—and no one knew the real reason until Jordan revealed it years later.