Jun 24, 2023; Nashville, Tennessee, USA; Team 23XI owner Michael Jordan looks on from pit road during qualifying before the Ally 400 at Nashville Superspeedway. Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

Michael Jordan is one of the richest individuals on planet Earth. With a $2,000,000,000 empire at his feet, MJ has earned a lot of money playing basketball, making investments, and signing endorsement deals. One of his biggest deals ever came in 1999, when he re-signed with Nike for $256,000,000. However, decades before he was an NBA superstar, he was just a kid. As revealed in the book Michael Jordan: The Life, he worked a regular job like most other people his age. In fact, the 119.76 paycheck he first earned now sits in a museum where it attracts international interest.

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The average American teenager usually ends up getting a job. Whether it’s to earn an extra bit of pocket money or to start funding their way to college. It’s a common practice in the United States. But, when it comes to His Airness, everything he does is worth fawning over. As was the first-ever paycheck he received as a young man.

Michael Jordan earned $119.76 back when he was a teenager, the paycheck of which is now in a museum

Back before he became an international phenom, Michael Jordan was s just a regular teenage boy. And, like most teenagers, he decided to go around job hunting. A smart decision by one of the most business-savvy men in today’s world. So, thanks to some help from his mother, MJ secured his first paycheck.

As he recalled in his book, Deloris Jordan, managed to get His Airness a job as a maintenance man. It was an interesting role, one that earned Jordan close to $3.10 an hour. A decent salary for one so young. But, what did Jordan do with his first paycheck? Instead of cashing it, he decided to put it in a museum.

Specifically, Jordan fans around the world can go and see the six-time NBA Champion’s first pay slip worth $119.76 in the Cape Fear Museum in Wilmington. It is a part of the museum’s famous Jordan collection, but the slip helped more than just him. The museum showcase also brought business to Whitey Prevatte, the man who gave Jordan the job in the first place. Here is what MJ had to say on the matter as part of a little excerpt from the book, ‘Michael Jordan: The Life‘.

“‘I was a hotel maintenance man,’ Jordan remembered. ‘I was cleaning out pools, painting rails, changing air-conditioner filters, and sweeping out the back room.’ The job paid Michael minimum wage, $3.10 an hour. Who could have imagined that the one and only paycheck stub of his entire working career, a slip from Whitey’s for $119.76, would one day wind up in a display case at the Cape Fear Museum in Wilmington as part of its Jordan collection?”

To this day, it remains an international attraction, and rightly so. After all, it was the first real money he ever made decades prior to the millions he made working with Nike and other companies. More than all else, it just goes to show, the impact he has on anything associated with his name.

MJ made the Chicago Bulls one of the most popular franchises in the NBA

If the success he brought a local businessman isn’t convincing enough of the Jordan effect, then all that is needed, is to look at what Michael Jordan did with the Chicago Bulls. Back in 1985, the Bulls were estimated to be worth $19,000,000. Fast forward 13 years into the future and the Bulls were worth $303,000,000 by the time MJ left the team. Today, the franchise’s value has ballooned up to 4.1 billion.

Jordan truly was a generational talent. One who impacted all those around him, not just with his play on the court, but with what he did off it as well. There can be no denying that he revolutionized the NBA and the heights it could consider reaching.