In the last years of his life, living quietly in Las Vegas, Michael Jackson had a way of unwinding that almost nobody knew about. His bodyguards Bill Whitfield and Javon Beard — the two men with him almost around the clock from 2006 until he died — described it plainly.
He would go outside by himself, pick up a basketball, and shoot for hours.
No audience. No music. No cameras. Just a man alone in a driveway, repeating the same motion over and over.
And he didn’t pick this up late. Basketball had been part of his life since he was a boy.
Michael Jackson and Marvin Gaye Playing Basketball
During the Jackson 5 years, the brothers regularly played with other Motown artists. Michael later remembered Marvin Gaye coming around to the Jackson house roughly twice a week for a game. Photographs from 1972 show the Jacksons, Marvin Gaye, and members of The Temptations together on a court.
Picture that for a second. Some of the greatest voices in American music history, playing pickup basketball in a California driveway.
Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan in “Jam”
Which is why the “Jam” video in 1992 worked as well as it did. Michael shared the screen with Michael Jordan—the two most famous men in the world in their respective fields —on a court, each attempting the other’s discipline. Jackson tried Jordan’s game. Jordan tried Jackson’s dancing.
It played as a gimmick. It was not. Jackson had been on courts his whole life.
But the detail that stays with you is the one from Las Vegas, decades later. Michael Jackson’s reputation was built on obsessive, endless repetition—the same dance step practiced until it was perfect, the same vocal take done again and again.
And when he wanted to relax, he went outside and repeated a single motion for hours.
Even his time off looked like practice.