Michael Jordan hasn't done much for his post-playing days reputation by mismanaging both the Wizards and Bobcats as well as his questionable hall-of-fame speech. His mother might damage it (slightly) further if she's wrong in her assertions that two recruiting letters from North Carolina to Jordan currently up for auction are actually replicas, as ESPN has reported.

"I know what I have," Deloris Jordan told ESPN.com. "They are all replicas. I just can't sit by and let these people say that they have what they say they have, when they don't."

If she's right, however, she'll probably add to Jordan's reputation in the same slight measure. Based on the evidence presented in ESPN's article, both sides have a few doubts.

Goldin Auctions has two recruitment letters sent from then North Carolina assistant coach Bill Guthridge (high bid of $2,500) and then head coach Dean Smith ($11,794), Jordan's college graduation diploma (attained in 1999 when he went back to school with a high bid of $8,250), and a school transcript (presumably college with a high bid of $1,000). The company received them from a consignor, who bought them off another individual who had purchased a storage unit containing the memorabilia from a closed-down Jordan's 23 restaurant. If that sounds like an episode of "Storage Wars," it wasn't, but it should have been. For those of you that follow the show, not all the storage units are as advertised -- good and bad.

But the items were deemed legitimate by reputable authenticator PSA/DNA. Mrs. Jordan disagrees, claiming she has the originals locked up in a safe. Yet, she refuses to show them and prove her point. Goldin Auctions CEO Ken Goldins has even stated that if she produced the originals, he would remove the objects from auction.

"We stand behind our authenticators' opinion 100 percent that what the auction is selling is real," PSA/DNA president Joe Orlando said. "And there hasn't been anything legitimate presented that contradicts the opinion of our authenticators. I respect Mrs. Jordan's approach and concern, but unless there's evidence to the contrary here, it doesn't mean much."

Goldin makes the point that Mrs. Jordan may indeed have the originals, but, in the case of the recruiting letters, there were likely more than two sent from the school to Jordan. That argument, however, probably wouldn't hold for the diploma. Typically, graduates only receive one of those. Perhaps Jordan requested another? If that is the case, though, the value of the one up for auction would likely be reduced.

"I have no doubt that Mrs. Jordan has numerous recruiting letters in her possession that she saved from her son Michael, and likely many from the University of North Carolina," Goldin said. "However, based upon the above facts as well as the third-party authentication, we find it unlikely she has the originals of these two particular letters."