I think I know why Michael Jordan is aging faster than Scottie Pippen

And surprise, surprise! It relates to teeth!

In 2023 I was watching the famous documentary “The Last Dance” on Netflix.

It’s about the career of Michael Jordan and was fairly controversial because Michael had significant editorial control over the content. And his teammate, Scottie Pippen, publicly complained that it overly glorified Jordan at the expense of other players on the Bulls team.

But this story is not the topic of my article today.

Rather it was my surprise when I saw Micheal and Scottie in the film, which was filmed in around 2020 or so.

The thing that caught my eye was just how much Michael had aged from a structural standpoint. Whereas Scottie Pippen had not.

And so I posted about this to my small, closed Facebook group at the time.

As i have used that group as sort of a scrapbook of my ideas over the years.

Jordan is clearly aging faster than Scottie

If you pay attention to the shape of the skull and body on people as they age for as long as I do, it's pretty obvious - Jordan's aging way faster than Scottie Pippen.

The edges on his face are getting softer, his profile has worsened considerably, and his body is losing it’s shape.

Most folks will just say "well, that's just aging," but then how do you explain Scottie? They're practically the same age, played the same number of years, but their aging trajectories are completely different.

Michael Jordan is missing an upper tooth

I started digging into this and found something interesting - Jordan had issues with his wisdom teeth back in 1985 that actually affected his ability to play. Here is the quote from him after that game.

I’m less concerned about the fact that his wisdom tooth was bothering him than I am about what the dentists did to fix it. Because that is often the bigger problem.

But more importantly, he's missing an upper incisor on his right side.

This social media post points this out and compares to what they think it would look like if he had the missing tooth (they are of course wrong because the image completely disregards soft tissue change).

As to why he’s missing the incisor? I asked ChatGPT and it seems to not be known.

But if you look at recent photos of Jordan smiling - there's clear asymmetry in his smile. Most people probably don't notice it, but from a biomechanical perspective, this plays a major role in how he ages.

Why i think this is impacting Michael

Missing an incisor changes how your teeth space out in your mouth and wear down over time. It's like removing one support beam from a bridge - everything else has to compensate.

When you lose natural dental symmetry, your teeth wear down faster then they would have.

Just imagine having a tire that was a different size from the other three. Will it impact how the other tires wear down? Clearly yes. And it will also probably result in mechanical failures of the car.

I've seen this pattern consistently over the years. And if you were tracking Michael’s dental contacts with articulating paper, you would almost definitely see his curve of spee flattening faster than Scottie’s.

Scottie seems to be holding up very well

Look at Scottie Pippen - he's 59, just two years younger than Jordan, but he could easily pass for his early 40s.

The dude still almost looks like he could play pro ball.

One thing to notice about Scottie - he's got bright, naturally well-developed teeth. You can see this in his younger photos - his teeth showed easily when he smiled, indicating good development.

When teeth are naturally bright (not artificially whitened), it usually indicates good overall structural health. Because the teeth clean themselves naturally as I also talked about earlier in this article:

Teeth should stay clean without effort

Are there any neurologic effects on Michael?

The honest answer is I am not sure.

He's not a very public guy these days and I just don’t cross paths with information about him enough to know if anything has been changing.

And he’s still way better off structurally than most 61-year-olds.

But are there some potential red flags? I think so.

His divorce in 2006, the way he portrayed himself in "The Last Dance" that pissed off teammates like Scottie - these could be indicators of neurological changes.

Could I also be reading too much into this?

Also yes. Hahaha. Even people with great neurology can make questionable decisions.

Closing thoughts

The reality is, Jordan is aging noticeably faster than peers like Scottie Pippen. And I think it's because of the dental asymmetry caused by his missing incisor among other things that might be going on dentally with Michael.

Based on what I've seen with these biomechanics over the past decade, I predict Jordan will continue to decline faster than someone like Scottie in the coming years.

This will likely show up as health issues that seem "age-related" but are actually biomechanical in root cause.

It's kind of ironic - Jordan was probably the most physically gifted athlete ever, but this small dental asymmetry might be what accelerates his aging process.

This is why I keep saying - your teeth matter way more than people think. Even someone like Michael Jordan, with his legendary genetics and fitness level, isn't immune to these biomechanical laws.

Remember - it's not about age, it's about structure.