You wouldn’t call Earl Jordan the father of basketball in Flint, but you sure could call him the godfather.
Jordan didn’t bring the game to town. All he did was raise it, nurture it, expand it and help improve it over a 30-
year crusade that is still going.
A town that was big on basketball became even bigger after Jordan began hosting clinics for kids, coaching teams
and bringing tournaments and big-name players to Flint. He has worked with the Flint Olympian and CANUSA
Games, the New York City National Pro Am Leagues and the Amateur Athletic Union, and has founded the Michigan
Basketball Association and Summer High School Basketball League.
For his decades of devotion to the game, the people who play it and the fans who watch it, Jordan will receive the
Distinguished Service Award at the Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame induction banquet this year.
“I just did it because it was something to do for the kids and the community,” Jordan said. “Along the way I met
some good people. I never thought it would go this long.”
Jordan never played basketball for his school teams in the Beecher district, but he was always playing the game
somewhere.
“We played intramurals and we lived in the gym,” he said. “In the summertime we’d play outside. In the winter we’d
shovel the driveway and hammer a basket to the top of the garage. We just loved playing ball.”
A fair shooting guard, Jordan did play in the Flint City Recreation Leagues, starting in Class B with Eddie’s Party
Shop and Fisher Barbecue. He moved up to Class A, where he decided to form his own team because “if you didn’t
play high school ball, they didn’t know you.”
After winning a title in Class A, he jumped up to the rugged City AA League.
“That was a definite wakeup call,” he said. “I think we won two games.”
But Jordan assembled a competitive team under the sponsorship of Universal Collision and coached the team
from 1974-94, winning the Michigan Open in 1979. He also started taking his team to tournaments in other towns
and states, including the AAU regional and the National AAU Tournament in Topeka, Kan.
When the AAU Region 5 chairman asked him to take that position, Jordan accepted and ran the AAU regional
for 10 years.
