duncan228
09-08-2009, 02:32 PM
MJ still ‘The Most Competitive Man in the World’ (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news?slug=ap-jordan-halloffame&prov=ap&type=lgns)
By Jim Litke
He imagined himself entering the Hall of Fame leaning on a cane.
Or else posthumously.
“That’s the way I look at it,” Michael Jordan said. “I was hoping this day was coming in 20 more years, or that I’d actually go in when I’m dead and done.”
His eyes were red-rimmed. He wasn’t laughing. That was five months ago, at the announcement of Jordan’s election to the Class of 2009, inside a downtown Detroit hotel on a grim, snowy Monday afternoon that fit his mood. Even so, come Friday, he will stroll into the Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony on 46-year-old legs that he believes have at least one more transcendent performance left in them, even if everyone else has doubts. He is—still—The Most Competitive Man in the World.
It’s become an article of faith in sports that sooner or later, the “next one” will come along; if not in this generation, then the next, or certainly the one after that. But there will never be another Michael Jordan.
Bill Russell, whose likeness is already inside, won more NBA championships— 11 to Jordan’s six. Two other men, Kareem-Abdul Jabbar (in) and Karl Malone (a cinch for the 2010 class), scored more points over the course of a pro career. Wilt Chamberlain scored more on a single night. Oscar Robertson put up 153 more triple-doubles.
Larry Bird was a better pure shooter. Magic Johnson was a better passer. Kobe Bryant might retire as the most complete offensive player ever. LeBron James has time on his side, 22nd-Century skills already, and a RoboCop physique to boot. His accomplishments might one day dwarf all of theirs.
But ask yourself: If your team is down by a point with 0:01 left and the fate of the universe is hanging in the balance, whose number are you gonna call?
The original 23. The same guy who bailed out the planet the last time.
Jordan was the first superstar of the 24/7 era. Then its first supersalesman. Try and name another athlete who could play himself in a corny movie like “Space Jam”—battling animated giant aliens who looked suspiciously like Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, et. al.—and still have it gross $230 million worldwide.
Tiger Woods?
Substitute a golf course for a basketball court and a 10-foot birdie putt at the 18th for the last-second shot in the scenario above and the answer is: maybe. At the moment, no one else is even in the argument. Open it up to history, and you can still count the names on one hand.
Four decades ago, writer Wilfrid Sheed said you could walk into a hut in the remotest corner of Africa and find a picture of Muhammad Ali hanging on the wall. Next to it might have been another of Pele. But TV had little immediacy back then and only a fraction of the audience to come. Four decades before that, Babe Ruth became the larger-than-life embodiment of a burgeoning Yankee empire. But that was when newspapers still roamed every corner of the earth.
When Jordan showed up in Chicago as a rookie, cable TV was just taking off and the satellite networks in Europe and Asia, set up to share soccer, were struggling to expand their modest reach. Everybody wanted sports programming, and Jordan produced a highlight reel’s worth every night. Better still, viewers in even the most faraway markets didn’t need subtitles to be thrilled by the sight of a man flying through the air.
In time, Nike turned that image into the best-selling silhouette of all time. Then Coke, McDonald’s, General Mills and a half-dozen other A-listers enlisted him to push product around the globe. But if his appeal was unparalleled—Jordan could sell to the suits, suburbs and Middle America, yet remain a hero to the Hip Hop Nation—so, too, were his demands.
Before Jordan, athletes rarely got more than a one-time licensing fee for an endorsement deal. After him came the deluge. By insisting on a piece of the action, Jordan amassed a personal fortune in the hundreds of millions. But that was only a fraction of what he made for others.
In June of 1998, some six months before he retired for the second time, Fortune magazine totaled up what it called “The Jordan Effect.” Counting merchandise moved, tickets sold, jacked-up TV ratings and fattened contracts for ballplayers, it concluded his impact on the economy since joining the NBA in 1984 was $10 billion.
He was never really about the money. Not after his first contract, anyway. He felt flush. The dollars were one way to measure his accomplishments, but like the scoring titles, regular season and finals MVP awards and even championships, they were byproducts. The only goal Jordan ever set for himself was winning.
Every time out, against anyone—whether as a kid going hammer-and-tong with older brother Larry on a caked-dirt court in the backyard, or doubling down at the blackjack table as the sun came up outside one of the dozens of casinos Jordan has frequented since.
His trump card was always the same. You didn’t have to spend much time around Jordan to know that the outcome was always going to matter more to him. That’s why people always got out of his way.
What fans remember about Game 6 of the 1998 Finals against the Jazz was the jumper Jordan drained to lock up the Bulls’ sixth title, and the way he stood frozen for a heartbeat afterward, his shooting hand tracing the arc of the basketball as it rippled through the net. What I’ll never forget is the moment that preceded the shot.
Jordan had suckered Utah’s Bryon Russell into reaching for the ball with a crossover dribble. There was no way Russell could recover in time to get back in Jordan’s way. Still, the moment he sensed the defender was off-balance, Jordan reached down and gave him a shove, just to be sure. Then he rose up and launched the shot.
I’d covered Jordan around the world for nearly 15 years by that point, from his first pro practice in Chicago, through the Dream Team’s Olympic adventure in Barcelona, and finally to Salt Lake City.
That push, more than the swished shot that followed it, or the pose Jordan struck in the moment after that, remains the perfect tableau for the most competitive athlete we will ever see.
The less said about his last comeback with the Washington Wizards the better.
By then Jordan realized he’d already passed on the perfect ending while he had the chance. Maybe that’s why he didn’t mind when Kobe coolly sank two free throws to erase the one Jordan cobbled together in the closing seconds of the first overtime in the 2003 All-Star game. It was midway through what was, mercifully, his final season.
“As much as I wanted to play well,” Jordan said after his East side lost 155-145 in double overtime, “it felt good just being out there.”
For most of his competitive life, you couldn’t have pried a sentence like that out of Jordan with the jaws of life. He never worried about perfect endings, or playing well, and he never set foot on a court just to feel good “being out there.” He watched the final five minutes of this one sitting on the bench though, looking lost.
He will feel that way again Friday. Jordan planned to enter the Hall on his way out of one arena and on his way to the next, preferably sandwiching his appearance between game-winning shots. He wanted the honor to be just another milepost on his way to still others, not a set-in-stone reminder that nobody wins forever, not even Michael Jordan.
By Jim Litke
He imagined himself entering the Hall of Fame leaning on a cane.
Or else posthumously.
“That’s the way I look at it,” Michael Jordan said. “I was hoping this day was coming in 20 more years, or that I’d actually go in when I’m dead and done.”
His eyes were red-rimmed. He wasn’t laughing. That was five months ago, at the announcement of Jordan’s election to the Class of 2009, inside a downtown Detroit hotel on a grim, snowy Monday afternoon that fit his mood. Even so, come Friday, he will stroll into the Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony on 46-year-old legs that he believes have at least one more transcendent performance left in them, even if everyone else has doubts. He is—still—The Most Competitive Man in the World.
It’s become an article of faith in sports that sooner or later, the “next one” will come along; if not in this generation, then the next, or certainly the one after that. But there will never be another Michael Jordan.
Bill Russell, whose likeness is already inside, won more NBA championships— 11 to Jordan’s six. Two other men, Kareem-Abdul Jabbar (in) and Karl Malone (a cinch for the 2010 class), scored more points over the course of a pro career. Wilt Chamberlain scored more on a single night. Oscar Robertson put up 153 more triple-doubles.
Larry Bird was a better pure shooter. Magic Johnson was a better passer. Kobe Bryant might retire as the most complete offensive player ever. LeBron James has time on his side, 22nd-Century skills already, and a RoboCop physique to boot. His accomplishments might one day dwarf all of theirs.
But ask yourself: If your team is down by a point with 0:01 left and the fate of the universe is hanging in the balance, whose number are you gonna call?
The original 23. The same guy who bailed out the planet the last time.
Jordan was the first superstar of the 24/7 era. Then its first supersalesman. Try and name another athlete who could play himself in a corny movie like “Space Jam”—battling animated giant aliens who looked suspiciously like Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, et. al.—and still have it gross $230 million worldwide.
Tiger Woods?
Substitute a golf course for a basketball court and a 10-foot birdie putt at the 18th for the last-second shot in the scenario above and the answer is: maybe. At the moment, no one else is even in the argument. Open it up to history, and you can still count the names on one hand.
Four decades ago, writer Wilfrid Sheed said you could walk into a hut in the remotest corner of Africa and find a picture of Muhammad Ali hanging on the wall. Next to it might have been another of Pele. But TV had little immediacy back then and only a fraction of the audience to come. Four decades before that, Babe Ruth became the larger-than-life embodiment of a burgeoning Yankee empire. But that was when newspapers still roamed every corner of the earth.
When Jordan showed up in Chicago as a rookie, cable TV was just taking off and the satellite networks in Europe and Asia, set up to share soccer, were struggling to expand their modest reach. Everybody wanted sports programming, and Jordan produced a highlight reel’s worth every night. Better still, viewers in even the most faraway markets didn’t need subtitles to be thrilled by the sight of a man flying through the air.
In time, Nike turned that image into the best-selling silhouette of all time. Then Coke, McDonald’s, General Mills and a half-dozen other A-listers enlisted him to push product around the globe. But if his appeal was unparalleled—Jordan could sell to the suits, suburbs and Middle America, yet remain a hero to the Hip Hop Nation—so, too, were his demands.
Before Jordan, athletes rarely got more than a one-time licensing fee for an endorsement deal. After him came the deluge. By insisting on a piece of the action, Jordan amassed a personal fortune in the hundreds of millions. But that was only a fraction of what he made for others.
In June of 1998, some six months before he retired for the second time, Fortune magazine totaled up what it called “The Jordan Effect.” Counting merchandise moved, tickets sold, jacked-up TV ratings and fattened contracts for ballplayers, it concluded his impact on the economy since joining the NBA in 1984 was $10 billion.
He was never really about the money. Not after his first contract, anyway. He felt flush. The dollars were one way to measure his accomplishments, but like the scoring titles, regular season and finals MVP awards and even championships, they were byproducts. The only goal Jordan ever set for himself was winning.
Every time out, against anyone—whether as a kid going hammer-and-tong with older brother Larry on a caked-dirt court in the backyard, or doubling down at the blackjack table as the sun came up outside one of the dozens of casinos Jordan has frequented since.
His trump card was always the same. You didn’t have to spend much time around Jordan to know that the outcome was always going to matter more to him. That’s why people always got out of his way.
What fans remember about Game 6 of the 1998 Finals against the Jazz was the jumper Jordan drained to lock up the Bulls’ sixth title, and the way he stood frozen for a heartbeat afterward, his shooting hand tracing the arc of the basketball as it rippled through the net. What I’ll never forget is the moment that preceded the shot.
Jordan had suckered Utah’s Bryon Russell into reaching for the ball with a crossover dribble. There was no way Russell could recover in time to get back in Jordan’s way. Still, the moment he sensed the defender was off-balance, Jordan reached down and gave him a shove, just to be sure. Then he rose up and launched the shot.
I’d covered Jordan around the world for nearly 15 years by that point, from his first pro practice in Chicago, through the Dream Team’s Olympic adventure in Barcelona, and finally to Salt Lake City.
That push, more than the swished shot that followed it, or the pose Jordan struck in the moment after that, remains the perfect tableau for the most competitive athlete we will ever see.
The less said about his last comeback with the Washington Wizards the better.
By then Jordan realized he’d already passed on the perfect ending while he had the chance. Maybe that’s why he didn’t mind when Kobe coolly sank two free throws to erase the one Jordan cobbled together in the closing seconds of the first overtime in the 2003 All-Star game. It was midway through what was, mercifully, his final season.
“As much as I wanted to play well,” Jordan said after his East side lost 155-145 in double overtime, “it felt good just being out there.”
For most of his competitive life, you couldn’t have pried a sentence like that out of Jordan with the jaws of life. He never worried about perfect endings, or playing well, and he never set foot on a court just to feel good “being out there.” He watched the final five minutes of this one sitting on the bench though, looking lost.
He will feel that way again Friday. Jordan planned to enter the Hall on his way out of one arena and on his way to the next, preferably sandwiching his appearance between game-winning shots. He wanted the honor to be just another milepost on his way to still others, not a set-in-stone reminder that nobody wins forever, not even Michael Jordan.