Three decades after the Jordan family seemingly put a life-changing tragedy behind them, it’s come back to haunt them in unexpected ways. The alleged murderers of James R. Jordan are denying the crime they were convicted for in 1996 and fighting for their release. Now, Daniel Green is speaking out for the first time since a North Carolina judge argued for his release in 2024. At the time of the search and subsequent discovery of Michael Jordan’s deceased father, a lot of unsavory rumors abounded about the then 3x Bulls champion. Green, unexpectedly, claims to know the reason behind it.

Daniel Green sat down with News13 reporter Annette Peagler at the Southern Correctional Institution in Troy, North Carolina. He’s serving his life sentence there after his alleged accomplice, Larry Demery, testified that Green was the one who fatally shot Jordan. Green did not testify then. But now he’s campaigning for his release by claiming he didn’t pull the trigger.

While Green was silent then, Michael Jordan was in the spotlight. Many speculated outright that MJ’s notorious gambling habit was the root of his father’s murder. That was never proven. Today, Green seemingly defends Jordan from those rumors.

“I’ve always disavowed that [gambling rumors] because I don’t think that Larry gambled,” Green said about the theories of Jordan’s gambling debt. He has a solid belief to claim that gambling had nothing to do with the crime. “I’ve never seen him gamble, and I’ve never seen him round people to gamble. At the end of the day, I don’t think that happened. I don’t think that has anything to do with it. I think Larry was probably high when he went out there; he was probably scared, and he misidentified the car.”

He does believe those rumors were concocted to deliberately target His Airness. “The reason for doing that, for making those allegations toward Michael Jordan, was to try to put the threat of a taint on his name, his legacy, so that they could then say, ‘OK, well, we want you to support this, or we’re gonna have your lawyers here,’” Green told Peagler.

This was an opinion foisted by Jordan’s defenders back then, too. However, the theory that the rumors were fabricated to hurt Jordan is just as much hearsay as the rumors themselves.

Convict believes Michael Jordan’s silence is a coping mechanism

In October 2024, Gregory Weeks, who presided over the original trial, petitioned North Carolina’s parole commission to release Green. He claimed that analyses by a forensic blood analyst, which could have affected the outcome of the trial, had been withheld. Weeks also claimed Larry Demery and his lawyer committed perjury.

No one from the Jordan family has commented on this matter. The closest we’ve heard Michael Jordan and his mother, Deloris, speak about it at all was on The Last Dance in 2020. Green seems to imply that their silence is to protect Jordan and his family from unfounded rumors.

“You gotta understand, he’s not making decisions, he has lawyers. He has really great lawyers, so they’re supposed to protect him. They’re gonna do whatever it takes, whatever is necessary to protect him. He’s not gonna know anything. So I just think that’s been a long time that something’s been happening, I’ve always spoken against it,” Green said right after alleging the rumors were made to taint the NBA legend’s legacy.

Through this sit-down, Green painted an empathetic picture of the Jordans. While he didn’t exactly make an appeal to them, he repeated, “I’m not responsible for James Jordan’s death.”

So far, the status of Daniel Green’s case is inconclusive, and the circumstances of James R. Jordan’s death remain a subject of legal and public scrutiny.