Michael B. Jordan Wanted to Change His Name Because of the Other Michael Jordan

Michael B. Jordan had to grow into his name.

In a Jan. 4 interview on CBS Sunday Morning, Jordan, 38, opened up about his life and career. CBS correspondent Tracy Smith asked the Sinners star if it was a “problem” growing up to have the same name as Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan. 

“Big time!” the Creed star said. “I got teased so much, to the point where I almost changed my name.”

His initial plan was to lean on his middle name, Bakari. “It definitely made me want to be competitive and be good at – I wanted to be great at something, if not for nothing else at that time just to, like, feel like I had my own identity,” he explained. 

Looking back, he said, having the same name as the NBA Hall of Famer “was a part of the alchemy that made me who I am today.”

Smith noted that the name Bakari means “noble promise” in Swahili and asked if Jordan feels he’s lived up to that name. 

“I feel like I’m walking in that and will continue to do so, big time,” he said. “We got a lot more things to do, you know? We’re just getting started.”

Jordan was named for his father, Michael A. Jordan. He noted during his Variety’s Actors on Actors conversation this December that his dad is older than the Space Jam star.

Jordan’s career began as a child model before he transitioned into acting roles. His breakout role was as Wallace on The Wire in 2002, and then he joined All My Children in 2003 as Reggie Porter Montgomery. From 2009 to 2011, he starred on Friday Night Lights as Vince Howard. Then in 2013, he received critical acclaim for his performance in Fruitvale Station, directed by his now-frequent collaborator Ryan Coogler. He’s since starred in Black Panther, the Creed films and 2025’s Sinners, which is garnering him major Oscar buzz. 

Back in November, Jordan opened up to PEOPLE about how his soap opera past helped bring him to the next phase of his career. He said that “my time that I spent on soap operas” has ended up being one of the biggest surprises of his career.

“I never knew how many casting directors and executives in Hollywood would tell me, ‘Oh man, my wife really loves you.’ Or like, ‘Oh, she watches you all the time on the stories… Come in for this and read for that,’ ” he said.

He explained, “It opened up so many doors in the most unexpected places for me, and that was… I think looking back at it, that was something that definitely caught me off guard. I didn’t expect that one. So that and The Wire were the two projects that really opened up a lot of doors for me in that sense.”

Jordan also said the intense production timeline of soap operas helped shape how he works. “I think soap operas, we’re doing a hundred-plus pages a day,” he said. “The work ethic, the grind of that definitely gave me a built-in work ethic and helped me refine that discipline at an early age. Yeah, definitely.”