Watching Celeb Watches – Michael Jordan Sporting Some Rare Pieces

In this week’s installment of Watching Celeb Watches we’re looking to go big. As big as 6 ft 6 to be exact. Hall-of-famer Michael Jordan takes a big leap when it comes to watches. As one of the most famous basketball players ever, he’s grossing a mere $ 30 million a year by endorsement deals alone, and that gives him easy access to the very finest in watchmaking. We found out that he has a liking to off the beaten track and that’s exactly up our sleeve!

A 6-time NBA champion, 6-time NBA Most Valuable Player, 14-time NBA All Star, 10-time NBA scoring champion, and an Hollywood “A-lister” (anyone remember Space-Jam?). Michael Jordan is a walking basketball-legend and he is considered by many, the all-time greatest of the sport. Let’s have a look at what courtly watches he wears off the court.

At a photo shoot for Jordan’s own sneaker brand “Jordan” (in collaboration with Nike) he’s wearing a Ulysse Nardin Sonata. He wears the white gold wrist watch that features a chiming alarm, a big date, a second time zone, and a countdown mechanism, on a white gold bracelet. This well over € 60k costing Sonata is far from a usual suspect, but a very interesting one and it’s packed with very useful functions.

Besides creating promotional material, press conferences are an obligatory part of a life in the spotlights. Michael Jordan is wearing a 50mm large Richard Mille RM032 automatic diver chronograph in red gold. We’ve covered a unique edition of the RM 032 for London based Marcus Watches before. This hefty dive watch (50mm x 17.80mm) features a flyback chronograph, combined with an annual calendar sporting an oversized date at 12 o’clock and a month indicator (with numbers from 1 to 12) between 4 and 5 o’clock. The annual calendar allows for the date change to be automatically calculated for months of 30 and 31 days; the only exception being the month of February. This RM 032 comes at a retail price of € 154.500 Euros.

As a former player, Michael Jordan attends quite a few games during the NBA-season. And that makes the perfect occasion for spotting extraordinary watches on his wrist. Here we can see him sporting a Jaquet Droz Grand Seconde Ceramic, a 44mm large black ceramic limited edition of 88 pieces. The dial features the characteristic double circle of the two sub dials, resembling the figure of 8.

Both Jason Statham and Giorgio Chiellini were also spotted wearing a Rolex Daytona, and so was Michael Jordan. While Chiellini wears the white gold version, Jordan sports the in 2013 introduced 50th anniversary platinum edition. We’re curious if next week’s celeb also wears a Daytona.

That Michael Jordan has a refined taste for watches is already clear. The following two watches are proof that he likes more than “just” refined, apparently he fancies the extraordinary timepieces created by one of Monochrome’s favourites URWERK!

Here we see him wearing the UR-203, one that we of course covered before. This URWERK’s siblings, the UR-202 White Shark and the UR-202S, have been covered here as well of course. Not one URWERK tells time by means of a central hour and minute hand, and mostly use revolving satellites, sometimes with telescoping hands or rotating cubes to indicate the time. One last image, a screen shot from ESPN (not the best still), shows Michael wearing another of our favourites, the iconic UR-103. Launched in 2005 it has become a classic among collectors and is unfortunately not in URWERK’s current collection anymore.

We don’t want to withhold you from one very elegant Michael Jordan timepiece. Back in the day, Jordan was “the inspiration” for French designer Guy Laroche, resulting in the Time Jordan. Maybe not everyone’s taste, and certainly not ours, this mid-eighties creation with a quartz movement comes up for grabs from time to time for 100-300 bucks.

Thanks to our contributors Nick and Robin for the research!