DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Michael Jordan now owns another ring.
Thanks to a buzzer-beater move every bit as stunning as a long-range NBA Finals dagger against the Utah Jazz or Cleveland Cavaliers, Tyler Reddick swerved his No. 45 Toyota — co-owned by Jordan and three-time Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin — through crashing traffic as if he were deking Craig Ehlo to stroke a game winner. The biggest game that stock car racing has to offer, the Daytona 500.
“I’m going to be honest: I’m not even sure what happened because I was so focused in the moment and I haven’t seen the tape yet,” the 30-year-old said in Victory Lane between hugs from family and drags off a champagne bottle. “But here’s what I’ve learned from the two bosses that I have: You have to be in position to win it when it’s time to win it, or guess what? You won’t win it!”
The race itself was a near-perfect representation of what the Daytona 500 has become in recent years. A legendary speedway and its signature event, built largely around the idea of speed since 1959, for now at least has become a chess game of saving fuel and tires. That’s not a new approach to the 500, but it has never been this widely prevalent for this long. It was a philosophy more utilized on short tracks and road courses. Preservation of equipment and body, timetable plans drawn up on laptops in the pits, with the goal of being near the front late so that the drivers can finally unleash their own plan of attack when the “laps to go” counter finally reaches single digits.
Now, thanks to more parity between cars and talent, the Great American Race, after hours set to a deliberate pace, becomes a very intense, short race. A sprint race. And Reddick, raised on the same Midwestern dirt tracks that brought us Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart and even Mario Andretti, is a sprint racer by nature.
“You hire a driver like Tyler because he is a wheelman, and anyone who follows racing knew that already,” said Hamlin, who joined Victory Lane in progress after his bid for a fourth 500 victory ended with a 31st-place finish thanks to a late crash. “Patience isn’t easy, especially for race car drivers.”
Reddick took the green flag in the 26th starting position. At the end of the race’s first stage, he was running 20th. At the end of the second stanza, he was eighth. When the white flag was shown to signify one lap remaining, Chase Elliott led and Reddick ran third … or maybe it was fifth … sitting smack in the middle of a three-wide, 30-deep sandwich. By the end of that lap, with cars spinning both in front of and behind him, he was suddenly first.
He spent only 18 of 200 laps inside the top five and led exactly one lap. The last one.
“Games aren’t won in the first quarter, or even the third. They can be lost then, for sure,” Jordan said before stealthily ducking out of the celebration. “But you can’t make a buzzer-beater if you aren’t there for the buzzer.”
This team, 23XI Racing, has felt as if it has been in a perpetual buzzer-beater situation for years.
In 2024, Reddick won the regular-season points title but was not able to carry that success to a Cup Series title in the NASCAR postseason. The following year brought a frightening health scare for his infant son that resulted in the removal of a kidney.
Last November, Hamlin, driving his day job ride for Joe Gibbs Racing, failed to end his lifelong quest for a championship in excruciating fashion. In December, he lost his already-ailing father to injuries sustained in a house fire.
And all of this took place while 23XI was in the process of suing NASCAR on the grounds of antitrust. Ultimately, that ended in a settlement that leaned in favor of the team, but not until exposing a lot of hurt feelings and raw emotion that largely overshadowed everything else in the NASCAR garage.
So, when NASCAR executives lined up for their traditional congratulatory handshakes and photographs with the Daytona 500 victors, it felt like the final period on a chapter of stock car racing history that everyone in the sport was eager to close.
Former legal combatants hugged it out. Hamlin, although much more reserved than normal, was smiling. Reddick ended a 38-race winless streak. Both his sons, both healthy, were in Victory Lane to greet him.
And yes, Jordan made sure he caught a glimpse of Reddick’s Daytona 500 championship ring before he departed. A piece of jewelry plenty shiny enough to take its place alongside MJ’s drawer full of basketball bling forged in buzzer-beaters.
Reddick looked down at that ring and choked a lump down his throat.
“There are a lot of people in here with us right now that have wanted to feel good about something for a long time,” he said. “I can’t imagine much feeling better than this.”
