Michael Jordan
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Michael Jordan is under fire for an incident in victory lane.
Former NBA great Michael Jordan’s incident with race car driver Tyler Reddick’s son, Beau, after the Daytona 500 victory lane celebration, created a massive stir via social media since Sunday’s race.
Camera footage showed Jordan apparently touching the boy in ways that looked awkward on camera to a massive number of viewers. Jordan and the elder Reddick are close friends through their work in race car driving, where Jordan is an owner of 23XI Racing and Reddick one of his drivers. Reddick’s rep briefly addressed the viral incident for TMZ Sports.
“We’re not going to talk about that,” Reddick’s rep told TMZ Sports when asked about the incident.
Social media users have aired accusations of Jordan being a pedophile in the aftermath, and debate ensued on what the interaction really meant. Beau Reddick’s father had just won the Daytona 500, and the incident occurred as confetti rained down during the championship ceremony.
According to TMZ, Jordan “hasn’t publicly commented on the matter, either” in the past 48 hours. The former Chicago Bulls great has been involved in auto racing since 2020, when he founded a NASCAR Cup Series team with driver Denny Hamlin.
Famed Podcaster Breaks Down Michael Jordan Incident
American podcaster Bubba The Love Sponge Clem explained that the incident with Michael Jordan isn’t what it seems.
“Tyler Reddick’s son had a chunk of ice. You can see that Tyler Reddick’s son’s shirt is completely saturated, and Michael Jordan, trying to help a little kid out, ‘let me get those chunks of ice out of your back,'” Clem explained.
Clem’s co-host concurred and expressed the concerns many aired on social media and beyond.
“It initially looks shocking, and I think there’s a reasonable explanation for it,” Clem’s co-host said. “It looks like he’s trying to get stuff out of his shirt and pants.”
“I think that’s exactly [it],” Clem interjected.
“It’s shocking the first time you see it,” his co-host added.
“It looks shocking. Please do your due diligence and realize that it was chunks of ice that were in the kid’s back area by his waistline of his shorts area, and Michael Jordan was not grabbing his [expletive],” Clem said. “He was grabbing the cubes of ice to try to break them up and make them fall down, and they fell down on his legs, and he wiped them off his legs.”
“None of us are doing it just because we all love Michael Jordan,” Clem added.
As Clem’s other podcast co-host, Seth Kushner pointed out, Jordan, “wasn’t in the Epstein files.”
“If this was a thing, we would probably all know about it,” Kushner said.
Jordan, who has been in the public eye since his North Carolina basketball days in the early 1980s, doesn’t have a criminal history.
Michael Jordan Has Close Relationship With Tyler Reddick’s Family
When Reddick joined the 23XI Racing team in 2023, his family became friends with Jordan.
Reddick described Jordan as a friend of the family in a 2024 interview with The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck. Beau Reddick, who was born in 2019, has been around and interacted with Jordan for years.
Gatorade/ice baths are also commonplace for Daytona 500 victory lane celebrations.