Concern over the discoloration of Michael Jordan’s eyes rebounded after fans noticed yellow pigment in the retired NBA star’s eyes at a soccer match in Monaco against Barcelona, but experts say the worry may be misplaced.
Snaps of the former Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards star, 61, at the Champions League match Thursday showed a yellow pigment in the sclera, or the white part of the eye.
Fans went into a tizzy, speculating in an Instagram carousel of images from the game that were posted by Bleacher Report that the NBA GOAT’s liver could be “shot,” or that he has alcohol-induced jaundice.
Jordan hasn’t spoken about any health issues, and his rep didn’t respond to a request for comment.
But it’s not the first time the yellow hues in Jordan’s eyes sparked a social media worries — a similar frenzy in 2020 followed the airing his Netflix documentary, “The Last Dance.”
“Yellow eyes should not be ignored because they are a sign of something more going on,” Dr. Val Phua, an ophthalmologist at Eagle Eye Centre Singapore, told Vice at the time. “There is literally more than meets the eye.”
Phua speculated that the discoloration could be an abnormal growth of tissue or point to jaundice.
Yet one self-proclaimed doctor disagreed, saying on Reddit four years ago that the yellow coloring was not jaundice, as it was splotchy rather than uniform.
Jordan’s “muddy” sclera, the physician said, is “a normal variation that’s commonly associated with aging.”
The American Academy of Ophthalmology backs up that claim, explaining on its website that “a brownish and sometimes blotchy color,” more common in African-Americans is “melanin pigment in the surface tissue of the eye,” and is benign.
Sometimes though, that can “be confused with a yellowing of the whites of the eyes which may be a sign of liver disease,” the academy noted.
