The Hero Falters

THE BIGGEST STORY in Washington these days is not campaign finance reform or President Bush’s desire to promote marriage. It’s Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, now injured. The question is whether he’ll return to the Washington Wizards, spur them to a spot in the National Basketball Association playoffs, and thrill the nation. Or whether he’ll fade away, forced by chronically sore knees and the ravages of age (39) to retire for good.

Since the NBA season began last November, Jordan’s return from retirement has been the biggest event in sports, bigger even than the Winter Olympics. Every game he’s played, home and away, has been sold out. Television networks that cover professional basketball suddenly are scheduling Wizards’ games in prime time. And fans everywhere talk excitedly about his amazing comeback after a 3-year layoff. Most important of all, he’s not only demonstrated he can still play basketball at the highest level of speed and skill but he’s also lifted one of the most pathetic teams in pro sports to playoff contention and perhaps to a championship. That is, until knee trouble led to surgery on Monday.

It’s only a small stretch to say there’s a lot more than just a sports angle to the Jordan story. Jordan is a remarkable figure in American life. An icon. He appeals to practically everyone. He bridges gaps between white and black, rich and poor, urban dweller and suburbanite, devout basketball fan and casual observer of the game, father and son. Like President Bush since September 11, Jordan is a uniter, not a divider. When his wife Juanita sued for divorce last fall, it prompted one of the Washington Post’s premier columnists, Bill Raspberry, to urge the Jordans to reconcile–for the good of the people of Washington and for the country. They reconciled.

Washington is a Redskins town, but Jordan has captured the city’s imagination in a way the football team hasn’t since its Super Bowl years under Coach Joe Gibbs. He’s both a charismatic personality and a scintillating player. When he rises from the bench to come in a game, a noisy ripple of anticipation spreads through the crowd. And when he’s announced as entering the game, the crowd roars. This happens not merely once or twice but every time Jordan goes in a game and often when he goes out.

Jordan’s comeback was like Ulysses Grant’s return to the U.S. Army in 1861 after seven years of retirement. Both were older and wiser and dedicated more than ever to one goal: winning. Jordan has changed his game to achieve this. He doesn’t bother now with looking for dunks or three-point shots. He doesn’t take as many shots, period, as he used to. He guides his team, seeing the whole court and every one of his teammates when he dribbles and especially when he drives to basket. And his young teammates, ecstatic at the chance of playing with the master, have learned to get open when Jordan is double- and triple-teamed. If they are, Jordan invariably finds them with a pass.

Played at the most skilled level, basketball can be a game of beauty in a way baseball and football cannot. It’s faster-paced than baseball and more athletic than football and more intensely exciting than either. Hockey is fast and exciting, too, but it’s a Canadian, not an American, sport.

Jordan is the ultimate anti-depressant–when he’s playing. For now, he has the psyche of the Nation’s Capital in the palm of his hand–or maybe in the crook of his knee. Washington is a town where worst-case scenarios get a lot of attention, particularly in the press. And in Jordan’s case, the worst is that his career is over. That would mean no dramatic return, no playoffs, no championship, no parade down Pennsylvania Avenue before a cheering throng of Washingtonians with only Jordan in common. That would mean months of sorrow in Washington. But if he struggles back for one last fling, it would continue a great saga and lift hearts all over town.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.

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