Michael Jordan Crying Meme
The Michael Jordan crying meme, usually shortened to Crying Jordan, is a close crop of Jordan in tears during his 2009 Hall of Fame induction speech. It gets attached to losers of every kind, and most often to the person posting it.
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Where the Michael Jordan crying meme comes from
The context is worth stating properly, because the meme has almost completely erased it. On 11 September 2009 Michael Jordan was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. During his speech he cried, repeatedly, while working through stories from his career. This is not a photograph of a man losing. It is a photograph of a man being honoured, at the ceremony marking the end of the most decorated career in his sport, becoming overwhelmed in front of a room that had come to applaud him. Savoia was one of many photographers there and caught the tears at close range.
Everything after that is the internet dismantling the context. The first documented meme use came nearly three years later: an image macro titled Sad Michael Jordan posted in April 2012, captioned with a joke about his purchase of the Charlotte Bobcats. What changed the format was cutting the head out. Once the face was a transparent layer rather than a picture, it could be pasted onto any athlete, any fan, any losing scoreboard, and the meme stopped being about Jordan at all.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 11 September 2009 | Jordan cries during his Hall of Fame induction speech in Springfield, Massachusetts. Stephan Savoia of the Associated Press takes the photograph. |
| 23 April 2012 | An image macro titled Sad Michael Jordan is posted, captioned with a joke about buying the Bobcats. It is the earliest documented meme use. |
| 7 November 2014 | A forum thread collecting edited versions circulates, marking the point at which the cut out head becomes a shared resource. |
| Early 2015 | A dedicated image thread appears in February and a Tumblr blog collecting the best examples launches on 4 March. |
| March 2015 | Pop culture press picks the meme up. An article on 23 March is followed by wider coverage the same week. |
| 16 October 2015 | A national news site publishes a printable paper mask of the crying face, which is roughly the point of no return. |
| January and February 2016 | Two of Jordan’s sons post their amused reactions. In February a spokesperson says he is aware of it and fine with it, provided nobody uses it for commercial gain. |
| April 2016 | Jordan attends the NCAA championship game and watches his old university lose on a buzzer beater. The meme has its single busiest night. |
| 22 November 2016 | At the Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony, Barack Obama jokes that Jordan is more than just an internet meme. |
Whether he likes it is genuinely disputed
Two accounts exist and they do not agree. In February 2016 a spokesperson gave a statement saying that everyone seemed to be having fun with it, that Jordan had noticed, and that the only thing being monitored was commercial use of his likeness. In May 2016 a celebrity news outlet asked Charles Oakley, a former Chicago Bulls teammate, and he answered flatly that Jordan does not like it. Both are on the record. A press statement is a considered position and a teammate’s aside is not, but neither cancels the other, and anyone telling you Jordan definitively loves this meme is choosing one source and ignoring the other.
What is not disputed is that he has acknowledged it himself. Speaking at Kobe Bryant’s memorial in 2020 he joked about knowing that crying in public would put the image back into circulation for years afterwards, which is the closest thing to an official acceptance the format has.
What it means and when to use it
The format is a scoreboard. It goes on the person who was confident and turned out to be wrong, and it works because the face is a real reaction of overwhelming feeling rather than a performance of sadness. That authenticity is what makes it funny at low stakes and what makes it cruel at high ones.
| Element | Literal reading | How it is actually used |
|---|---|---|
| The tears | Real emotion at a career honour. | Comic defeat. The original meaning is completely inverted, which is the entire mechanism of the meme. |
| The red background | Hall of Fame stage lighting. | Usually cropped or replaced. Most versions keep only the face. |
| The cut out head | An edit. | The real format. Pasted onto losing players, fans, mascots and logos, which is why it outlived the plain two box version. |
| Upper box | A caption. | The confident claim, the prediction, the bragging message you sent earlier. |
| Lower box | A caption. | What actually happened. Short and factual beats elaborate every time. |
| Pointed at yourself | Self mockery. | The best and most common use. You lost the bet, you called it early, you were wrong in public. |
| Pointed at a real person having a bad time | Commentary. | Wrong use. The photograph is a real man crying, and aimed at someone genuinely suffering it stops being a joke. |
Captions that work
Two text boxes. Put the confidence on top and the result underneath. This format is at its best aimed at yourself, so write the upper line in your own voice.
- sportsMy bracket after the first Thursday Perfect through six games
- sportsFantasy team, week one Two starters ruled out at kickoff
- sportsMe, five minutes after calling it an absolute lock The lock
- sportsChecked the score with two minutes left Should not have
- sportsThe one season I did not renew my tickets They win everything
- moneyBought at the very top Rereading my own confident posts
- friendsTold the group chat this year would be different It was, worse
- sportsYear seven of the rebuild Still rebuilding
- sportsSold the striker the week before the hat trick Fantasy manager
- sportsLeft at half time to beat the traffic The comeback
- sportsWe are absolutely going for it on fourth down We were not ready
- friendsTwelve unread messages after the buzzer All from people I texted first
Variants and close relatives
| Format | Source | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| Sad Michael Jordan | The April 2012 image macro | The pre cut out version. Text above and below the untouched photograph, no compositing. |
| The cut out head overlay | Fan made transparent file, in circulation from 2014 | Not a captioning template at all. It is a sticker pasted onto other photographs, which is how the meme actually spread. |
| The printable mask | Published by a news site on 16 October 2015 | The format leaving the screen entirely. A marker of how mainstream it had become. |
| Crying Jordan sneakers | A 2016 art project embroidering the face onto Air Jordans | Merchandise rather than meme, and the clearest example of the commercial use his camp said it was watching for. |
| Michael Jordan crying in bed | A separate still that circulates as its own template | Different image, same joke. Often confused with the Hall of Fame photograph. |
Common mistakes
- Aiming it at a person rather than a result. The target should be a prediction, a scoreline or your own confidence, not a human being having a bad day.
- Assuming the photo is of a defeat. It is from a ceremony honouring him. Captions written as though he had just lost a game get the source exactly backwards.
- Explaining the loss. The face already carries the emotion. The lower box needs the fact, not the analysis.
- Using it commercially. This is the one line his representatives have publicly said they watch. It is a real person’s likeness, not a stock asset.
- Reaching for it as though it were new. It peaked a decade ago. Use it knowing it reads as a period reference.
- Stacking three or four heads in one image. That was funny in 2016. Now it just looks like a screenshot of 2016.
Limits and etiquette
Start with the honest one: this format is old and it looks it. Crying Jordan was inescapable between roughly 2015 and 2017, was used by broadcasters and brands until it was completely worn through, and has been steadily replaced by newer reaction faces. It still communicates instantly, which is a real advantage, but nothing about it will feel fresh.
Then the subject. This is a photograph of a living person crying at a genuinely emotional moment in his own life, taken by a working news photographer, and turned into shorthand for failure by people who had nothing to do with either. Jordan has broadly tolerated it and has joked about it himself, and his representatives drew one clear line, which was commercial use. That combination sets a sensible standard: the meme is fine pointed at a bad bracket or your own bad take, and it is not fine as a way of mocking him, his family or anyone else who is actually having a difficult time. The picture is funny only for as long as everyone remembers it is not really about him.
The template frame reproduced here is third-party material, hosted for captioning only; rights holders can use the takedown policy at /dmca/.
Frequently asked questions
Where does the Michael Jordan crying meme come from?
From a photograph taken by Associated Press photographer Stephan Savoia on 11 September 2009, during the induction speech at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Why was Michael Jordan crying?
He wept repeatedly through his own Hall of Fame induction speech while recounting stories from his career. It was a real emotional moment at a ceremony honouring him, not a defeat.
When did it become a meme?
An early image macro called Sad Michael Jordan appeared in April 2012. The cut out head spread through forums in 2014 and 2015 and reached the mainstream in early 2016.
What does Crying Jordan mean?
It marks a loss. Posters attach it to a team that has just been beaten, a prediction that has just failed or, most often, to themselves after being publicly wrong.
How many text boxes does the crying Jordan template have?
Two. The upper box sets up the confidence and the lower box delivers the result, which is why the format works best as self mockery.
Does Michael Jordan mind the meme?
Accounts differ. In February 2016 a spokesperson said he was fine with people having fun with it as long as nobody used it commercially. Three months later a former teammate told a celebrity outlet the opposite.
Has he ever referenced it himself?
Yes. While speaking at the Kobe Bryant memorial in 2020 he joked about the fact that crying in public would put the image back into circulation for years.
Is Crying Jordan still funny?
It peaked around 2016 and is now a period piece. It still reads instantly, which makes it reliable, but nobody will be surprised by it.