The One and Only
He was peerless in the high art of the modern superstar: soaring, dunking, inspiring. What will the NBA, and the rest of us, do without him?
By JOEL STEIN and NISID HAJARI

We should be sick of Michael Jordan. We should send him--his Italian suits, extended tongue, faint mustache and gold hoop earring--straight back to the '80s where he belongs. This is a guy who has had his own shoe since 1985. Are we still watching Miami Vice and moonwalking and wearing skinny ties? Come on, people. Move on.

But we can't. Even as players return to training camp this week to prepare for the strike-shortened season, even after the flood of praise and highlight footage and handicapping unleashed by Jordan's announcement, last Wednesday, that he was retiring from the game of basketball, the world's most recognizable pate lingers on our radar screens. Forget about Jordan's once-dominant Chicago Bulls: with only four players (and only one starter) signed to contracts and the team's linchpin, pouty forward Scottie Pippen, on chilly terms with management, the squad faces a fate far worse than being mocked as the Jordanaires. Ignore even the league itself, which hoped desperately that Jordan's skills and impeccable bonhomie would revive its tarnished image. (An Internet poll taken soon after his announcement found that nearly 6 out of 10 respondents thought an NBA without Jordan wasn't worth watching.) By grounding himself, His Airness has altered the future of sports history: no matter who wins the championship this year, they will always wonder if they could have wrested the ring from Mike himself. This is the mark of a superstar--that even his absence casts a long shadow.

We should have been prepared. For a man whose legend has always drawn equally upon what he did (dropping an inflated ball through a hoop) and how he did it (with a grace that would shame the Bolshoi), Jordan's last moments on the court should have been obvious. To sink a layup with 40 seconds left, then race downcourt and steal the ball, then drain a jumper to give his team a one-point victory--in the final game of the sixth championship won by the Bulls last June--was too perfect a note not to end on. The signs merely piled up during the off-season: the only coach he said he would play for, Phil Jackson, resigned; he hit the golf links more often than the weight room; according to some reports, he even transformed his in-house gym into a cigar den. (At some point he also severed a tendon in one of his fingers trying to cut a cigar, a mishap doctors say would have kept him from playing for two months.) Word of Jordan's decision leaked days before his Wednesday press conference in Chicago. When he finally made his announcement, his rationale seemed both obvious and eminently reasonable: he was tired; he had lost "the mental challenges [needed] ... to proceed as a basketball player"; he wanted to watch his kids grow up. Only the selfish or the churlish could quibble with such reasons, right?

But at the same time, who would quibble with ours? Animating the displeasure and disappointment and even despair of fans is the knowledge that we will, as they say, never see his like again. Most of us would agree with the inscription at the base of the towering Jordan statue that looms before the United Center in Chicago--"The best there ever was. The best there ever will be." No one else ever led the league in scoring 10 times or averaged as many as 31.5 points a game over a career. Of the greats, only Boston Celtics star Bill Russell won more championships than Jordan's six; only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won more league MVP awards than Jordan's five. Only Abdul-Jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain scored more points than Jordan's 29,277. The proof lies less in the hyperbole of sportswriters than in the awe of his peers. Says Russell: "I cannot imagine anyone playing any better."

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