Just one week before he turned 51 on February 17, Michael Jordan and his wife, Yvette, scored a slam dunk of joy as they welcomed twin daughters into the world. The identical twins — Victoria and Ysabel — have two big brothers and a big sister from the basketball legend’s first marriage.
After several years romancing her, Jordan proposed to Yvette Prieto, a Cuban-American model, on ChristmasEve 2011. They were married on April 27, 2013, in Palm Beach, Florida, and enjoyed a wedding reception at a private golf club in nearby Jupiter.
The couple announced in November 2013 that they were expecting their first child together, due in April 2014. Shortly after that, it was announced that the couple were expecting identical twin girls.
In an announcement to The Associated Press on February 12, Jordan’s spokeswoman, Estee Portnoy, says “the babies are doing well and the family is overjoyed at their arrival.”
It’s much too soon to speculate on the likelihood of Victoria or Ysabel following in the footsteps of their famous father but family ties seem to keep Jordan’s kids close to the court.
After graduating in 2007 from Loyola Academy, a private Catholic high school in Wilmette, Illinois, Jeffrey Michael Jordan (now 25) entered the University of Illinois, where he played basketball three seasons. He eventually transferred to the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where his younger brother, Marcus James Jordan (23), also played three seasons of basketball for the college team.
Big sister Jasmine Jordan, 21, attends Syracuse University in New York, where she is studying sports management. Jasmine was recently quoted by a Chicago-based blog, The Boss Up, saying she does “not play basketball but I know the game.” She also claims to own some of the Nike-brand Air Jordan sneakers her daddy inspired but she doesn’t wear them every day, preferring instead to “switch it up.”
In its biography of Michael Jordan, the website for the National Basketball Association (NBA) states, “By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time” and is considered a driving force behind the global popularization of the sport during the 1980s and 1990s. Jordan was a member of the Dream Team of basketball players representing the USA in the 1992 Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. In 2010, the entire Dream Team was inducted into the Basketball of Fame, as was Jordan individually the year before.
Television sports network, ESPN, named Jordan the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century. In its list of the century’s greatest athletes, The Associated Press placed Jordan at #2, behind Babe Ruth.
Source: Reed, Steve. “Jordan’s wife gives birth to twin daughters.” HuffPost Sports. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. Feb 12, 2014. Web. Feb. 18, 2014.
