For them it's easy for them to not be up on this type of nuance. He retired and came back twice, so I could see someone from that generation missing that and thinking he played baseball after winning 6 chips, and came back with the Wizards.

Also regarding your 14 year old, I'm assuming the cat you met was older than that. The reason your 14 year old (and my 13 year old) know Space Jam is because they are children of kids who loved Space Jam back in the 90s. I can definitely see some one 20-25 or so not being up on Space Jam at all. Also at that age Jordan would have been FULLY retired by the time they started watching basketball.

An equivalent would be someone from our generation, when we were 20 or so, mixing up the order of team Wilt played for. Yeah if we know basketball we should know that it was the Globetrotters, Warriors, 76ers, Lakers, but I could definitely see someone mixing it up because to them it's all "the past".