In Chicago, Jordan’s ‘super secret gambling suspension’ is mostly regarded as conspiracy stuff.
And yet the gambling problem is pretty well known, and had started blowing up over the summer. Then he suddenly “retires” right as the season is starting. Keep in mind this was just a couple of years after Rose was banned too, gambling had become a very scary word to most of the sports. Nobody wanted their biggest star to have that word tied to them, so then Jordan goes away for year in the relative obscurity of minor league baseball (which of course didn’t even start until 6 months later, or about 9 months after the gambling story started rumbling around). It all turned out very conveniently for everybody.