Larry Miller, who served as the president of Michael Jordan's Jordan Brand from 1999-2006 and president of the Portland Trail Blazers from 2007-2012, had to get something off his chest.
Recently sitting down with Sports Illustrated, Miller revealed that when he was 16-years-old in Philadelphia, he killed a man.
Miller had kept information private for more than 50 years but had slowly begun to divulge the details of a September night in 1965 that left an 18-year-old man dead.
Air Jordan Chairman Larry Miller Admits He Killed A Man When He Was 16">Dave Rossman/Getty Images
After one of his friends had been stabbed and killed by a rival Philadelphia gang member, Miller said he and three friends got drunk, grabbed a .38 caliber pistol and went looking for trouble. Miller shot and killed the first person they saw. He did not know the man he killed, later identified at 18-year-old Edward White and Miller says that is what haunts him.
"That’s what makes it even more difficult for me, because it was for no reason at all," Miller told Sports Illustrated. "I mean, there was no valid reason for this to happen. And that’s the thing that I really struggle with and that’s—you know, it’s the thing that I think about every day. It’s like, I did this, and to someone who—it was no reason to do it. And that’s the part that really bothers me."
Miller was later arrested and imprisoned until he was 30-years-old. After getting out of prison and receiving his degree from Temple University, Miller was denied a job due to his criminal past and subsequently began hiding his secret deeper and deeper, pushing it further down with every high-profile job he took until now, when he decided he couldn't, and shouldn't, keep the secret any longer.
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The Jordan Brand chairman said that Jordan, NBA commissioner Adam Silver and others have been supportive as he has revealed his secret to the world, but still says he would change how it all happened if he could.
"If I could go back and undo it, I would absolutely do that. I can’t. So all I can do is try to do what I can to help other people and try to maybe prevent this from happening to someone else," Miller said.
What do you think of Miller's shocking revelation? Let us know in the comments.
[Via]