Basketball: Final farewell to the genius of Jordan
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Your support makes all the difference.This time, surely, it's for real – and for good. Tonight Michael Jordan plays his last game in the NBA in Philadelphia against the 76ers, and basketball will bid a final farewell to perhaps the greatest star ever to have graced the sport.
There have been false alarms before; first, when he left the Chicago Bulls in 1993 after his father died, to pursue a quixotic ambition to make the grade in baseball. In the event, he didn't make it past the Chicago White Sox farm team in Birmingham, Alabama. That exile ended with a laconic 1995 press-release reading simply, "I'm Back." Three years later he retired a second time from the Bulls at the most perfect moment imaginable, having scored the winning points in Game Six to wrap up the 1998 NBA championship series against the Utah Jazz. But Jordan couldn't stay away from basketball. Improbably, he signed up with the dismal Washington Wizards in 2001 for one last roll of the dice.
After two seasons, Jordan is retiring for a third time. At 40, he is still a good player, but no longer a great one. His knees are going, his back is increasingly bothersome. When he played his last home game here on Monday night against the New Jersey Knicks, Washington knew it was saying goodbye.
It was a bizarre evening. Naturally the sold-out MCI arena crowd raised the roof on his every play. With both teams having missed the play-offs, the game didn't matter. Even so, Jordan's ferocious competitiveness was as usual on full display. As usual too, he top-scored (21 points and eight rebounds). He hustled the referees, goaded his team-mates and never passed up a chance for an audacious steal. But to no avail. The Wizards lost 79-93, and the verdict of the coach, Doug Collins, was lapidary: "We stunk."
Jordan may never have managed to carry the hapless Wizards to the post-season, but for the two years he played here, the team – without an NBA championship for 25 years – was slightly less woeful. More important, he imparted serious, much needed glamour to the drab Washington sports scene.
The US is as insular in sport as other areas. Who here understands the exploits of Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane, David Beckham? But America's conceit that Jordan was the most famous sporting figure on earth may not – in his Chicago Bulls pomp – have been misplaced.
The No 23 jersey could be seen on streets, playgrounds and basketball courts from Seattle to Shanghai, from Cape Town to Chicago. His record speaks for itself: six NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls, five season MVP awards, first all time in points per game (around 30.5), third in total points (he surpassed Wilt Chamberlain's 31,419 last January). For most sober judges, he is the greatest basketball player who ever lived.
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