Bubba Wallace has had strong ties with NBA legend and 6-time NBA Championship winner, Michael Jordan, ever since Jordan decided to enter NASCAR as a team owner. His 23XI Racing gave Bubba his first win in the NASCAR Cup Series, but apart from sharing the same team garage, the two share one more commonality.

Michael Jordan entered NASCAR when he and Denny Hamlin decided to invest in a team. 23XI Racing was unveiled in 2020 and since then the team has racked up a couple of wins. Among those was Bubba’s win at the YellaWood 500, at Talladega Superspeedway. Bubba also won the Hollywood Casino 400 in Kansas.

But his win in Kansas has not been the biggest highlight or the most talked-about part of his season. It has been his controversial moment of anger at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Bubba was found guilty of dangerous on-track and off-track behavior as he first, wrecked Kyle Larson, and later threw a couple of punches at him.

Wallace was given a one-race suspension, which meant he missed out on Homestead-Miami; he made his return to racing in Martinsville last weekend. 23XI Racing also fined Wallace, which was said to be of  $1 million. The experience is not alien to his friend and team owner, Michael Jordan, who himself has a couple of blots like these in his extraordinary NBA career.

Jordan was suspended in 1993 for one game without pay and also fined $10,000 for his involvement in a brawl with Indiana Pacers’ Reggie Miller. The brawl also resulted in a $6,000 fine for the Pacers’ Guard.

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As Bubba has repeatedly said since the incident at the LVMS, he has learned from his actions. Disciplinary issues are of course problematic for an athlete, but what is worse is not changing; he doesn’t fall in that category.

Michael Jordan had a few problems with discipline himself 

The 6-time NBA Champion has had a stellar career but it wasn’t a speckless career. Aside from his 1993 incident with Reggie Miller that led to a one-game suspension and $10,000 fine, Jordan had a fair few other disciplinary standoffs. In the incident with Miller, while Jordan was allowed to continue playing the game, Miller was ejected. A review of video footage found Michael to be the aggressor leading to the penalty that was enforced.

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Just a year prior to that, he had to be ejected after he pushed the referee. Into the third overtime in the game against Utah Jazz, with only half a second left to play, he started protesting against a foul call – in the end, he had to be removed. That ejection was followed by a $5,000 fine and a one-game suspension.

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His disciplinary issues on the court might have been detrimental to his reputation, but what really shows the quality and influence of MJ was the fact that the Chicago Bulls ended up losing both games they played during his suspensions.