The Ferrari and the Mercedes: The Famous Michael Jordan Jamal Crawford Bet That Never Happened
“Cap emoji, my bro.”
With those five words in November 2025, Jamal Crawford finally buried one of the most enduring urban legends in NBA history a story so perfectly crafted, so dripping with competitive menace, that it survived as “fact” for nearly 25 years.
It had everything: a brash rookie, a 38-year-old legend, escalating cash bets, a Ferrari-versus-Mercedes showdown, and Michael Jordan coolly removing a custom license plate before driving off in a stunned kid’s brand-new car .
The Legend: How the Story Was Told
2001. Michael Jordan, preparing for his second comeback with the Washington Wizards, is working out. Enter Jamal Crawford, a 20-year-old Chicago Bulls rookie who grew up idolizing Jordan.
Bet 1: $1,000. Jordan wins, laughs it off, and dismisses the stakes: “A thousand dollars is for babies.”
Bet 2: $5,000. Crawford ups the ante and wins. Jordan, visibly annoyed, looks at the young guard and asks casually: “What car did you drive here with?”
Crawford agrees. Jordan steps to the line, drains five consecutive three-pointers, and doesn’t miss. He walks to Crawford’s Mercedes, removes the personalized license plate, gets in, and drives away .
There was only one problem: Jamal Crawford never said any of it happened.
The Debunking: Crawford Calls “Cap”
In November 2025, a fan on X (formerly Twitter) shared the famous story and tagged Crawford, asking simply if it was true.
The response was definitive, dismissive, and long overdue. Crawford, now 45 and retired, had spent years hearing this story told as gospel. He never confirmed it. He never participated in any interview retelling it.
The tale, it turned out, had been constructed entirely by third-party storytellers Pozzecco, basketball blogs, and Twitter aggregators who assumed its veracity because it felt too perfect to be false .
The Truth: What Actually Happened to Crawford’s Mercedes
Here is where the real story messier, less cinematic, but undeniably true begins.Crawford did, in fact, lose his Mercedes as a rookie.But it wasn’t to Michael Jordan. It wasn’t in a shooting contest. And Jordan’s Ferrari was never involved.
In a revealing interview on The Pivot, Crawford admitted the truth: he lost his car in a craps game. He was gambling, lost thousands of dollars, and tried to bet his way out of the hole.
So he handed over the keys to his Mercedes his first major purchase as an NBA player to an unnamed man. No three-point contest. No Ferrari. Just a rookie who got in over his head and made the pragmatic.
The Relationship: Jordan and Crawford, Then and Now
Crawford and Jordan worked out together multiple times during Crawford’s early years in Chicago. Jordan, though by then in Washington, remained an icon in the city and a frequent presence at Bulls practices.
When he finally did, it wasn’t with bitterness. It was with the casual authority of a man who has heard the same tall tale about himself for two decades and decided, finally, to set the record straight.
“My bro,” he called the fan who asked. Not a dismissal of Jordan. Just a correction of history.
The Final Score
Michael Jordan: 0 Ferraris gained. 0 Mercedes taken.
Jamal Crawford: 1 Mercedes lost—to an anonymous craps opponent, not the GOAT.