PCGUIA 10/PC Guia 10.iso/database/body/cu94.txt

Text File | 1996-03-13 | 19KB | 383 lines

1.5
Six foot six, head like a billiard ball, baggy shorts and tongue
lolling out, Michael Jordan was hailed in America as the
greatest athlete on the planet. He had nine roller coaster
years with the Chicago Bulls, during which he led them to
three consecutive NBA titles, became the league's highest
scorer for seven years in a row, and earned $35 million a
year. Michael Jordan was born the second of five children to
a middle-class family in North Carolina. His father was a
plant supervisor at General Electric. He learned his craft in
the backyard court built by his father. He progressed through
college basketball, joined the Bulls in 1984, and the rest is
sporting history. His nickname "Air" was well justified. Tests
done at NASA showed that, due to a combination of physical
features, he could indeed arrest his return to the earth for
longer than most humans. His major sponsor Nike would
have been earthbound without him, too. In 1992 many of the
414 million people who bought the Nike sneakers Jordan
promoted were harboring a wish to follow in his kingsize
footsteps. In 1993 Jordan retired from basketball, and
decided to try his hand at minor league baseball. The
experiment did not amount to much, but it gave Jordan a
break from the monotony of supreme brilliance - which was
probably the point of the exercise. In 1995 his return to the
Bulls was described as the Second Coming. Such was Jordan's
glory that nobody thought the expression a blasphemy, or
even an overstatement. As Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics
had said years before, "He is just God disguised as Michael
Jordan"
@
2.2
Michael Jordan was criticised for trying "too hard" in the
third game of the National Basketball Association finals, as
the Chicago Bulls dropped a game to the Phoenix Suns earlier
in the week.  He tried too hard again in the fourth yesterday,
but Chicago will probably forgive him this time. For he scored
55 points in an extraordinary display of virtuosity.  I have
never seen a team game dominated so much by an
individual.  At times his team-mates reminded me of the
sequinned lady who pirouettes beside a master magician and
milks applause for The Great Mysterioso.  Chicago won 111-
105, and the Suns' coach, Paul Westphal, said it all.  "He
inflicted his will on us."

Basketball people like to talk about "hang time".  This is the
length of time a player can remain at the peak of his jump,
suspended in mid-air.  The term is borrowed from American
football: the punter must make a kick of perfectly-judged
"hang-time", allowing his player to arrive beneath it exactly
as it comes to earth.

To watch Jordan at the apex of his leap, feint, stop, have a re-
think, feint again and then impossibly slot the ball home
from an utterly unexpected direction, is to learn something
about hang-time.

The problem is that the concept is bogus.  No object can hang
in the air.  Try it with a brick: it does not work.  The point is
that with these superlative basketball performers, it seems
to.  The leap is prodigious, and the speed of mind and body in
mid-leap baffles the eye.  It looks as if Jordan is hanging
from Peter Pan wires but the true miracle is that he is as
much subject to the laws of gravity as the rest of us.  It just
does not seem that way.

In the United States they reckon Jordan is the finest athlete
that ever drew breath.  But after the game three defeat,
people were wondering if this was not the beginning of the
end.  Jordan complained of tired legs; meanwhile, claims
about his taste for high-stakes gambling had sullied his
saintly image.  He was up against it, but some superstars
rather like that.

And Jordan's answer was utterly overwhelming.  The fact
that the game was not a complete rout was a mighty tribute
to the feistiness of the Suns, and in particular of the roi soleil,
Charles Barkley.

Jordan got most of his points the painful way, driving
through the crowd at the basket.  He worked trick after trick.
Fake right, go left.  Fake right, go right.  Three men took
turns at stopping him, three men failed.  Each in his turn was
left grasping at air.  I remember a comment when George
Best's marker was substituted: "He was suffering from
twisted blood," Best's pal, Paddy Crerand, said.

Jordan was his usual stately, deep-voiced self after the game.
His nature is gracious and perfectly enigmatic.  "When a big
game comes I try to do too much and get out of rhythm," he
conceded.  But this time, it all worked.  His colleagues on
Team Jordan simply gave him the ball and let him get on
with it.

"I didn't really sense myself taking over the ball game,"
Jordan said.  "I was more or less penetrating, trying to get
easy baskets and I felt myself able to capitalise on the
defense.  I used all different methods to beat the defense."

He did.  But all the same, the Suns had a chance to steal the
game at the death, and then no doubt the magnificent
performance would have been written-up as another tired
display from an ageing superstar.  The Suns had closed to
within two points with 33 seconds left, and had possession.

But B. J. Armstrong pulled off a dramatic steal, slipped the
ball to The Great Mysterioso and once again, Jordan
hammered into the heart of the Suns' defense.  He faked,
faked again, and as usual soared.  He got a shove on the way
up from Barkley: whacked giddily off balance, he turned in
mid-air and with his usual airy disregard for the laws of
physics and biomechanics popped the ball home.  He was
facing the wrong way at the time, but no matter.  He then got
up to take the free throw awarded for Barkley's foul: the ball
hit nothing but net and that was the game.

Game five is here in Chicago tonight, and the Bulls, 3-1 up,
are confidently expected to win, and with it, the best-of-
seven championship for the third successive time.  It's a
dangerous position for us Jordan said.  "You can overlook the
last game.  The last game will be the most difficult.  We don't
want this thing to slip through our fingers."

Was this year best championship game ever, Michael?
"Naaaw. The best game is always the last game.  It was one of
my greatest games.  I've yet to see the greatest."
@
2.4
The statue outside the United Centre in Chicago, the new
home of the Chicago Bulls basketball team, says all you need
to know about the status of Michael Jordan.  The ten-foot tall
bronze depicts Jordan in familiar pose, vaunting his
athleticism over a prostrate half-figured opponent, above an
inscription which reads simply: "Michael Jordan The best
there ever was.  The best there ever will be."

Nobody in Chicago doubts that judgment, but Jordan does not
like the statue much.  He thinks that it says too much about
the image and too little about the man.  Jordan, above all,
knows the value of image, but his forsaking of basketball for
minor league baseball nearly two years ago was as much a
search for normality, a conscious effort to shed an image, as a
test of boyhood fantasy.  Jordan actually describes a
recurring dream in which he completes his first home run,
then keeps on running out of the stadium and down the
street, the noise of the crowd still loud in his ears.

Jordan also recalls a real moment, when one of his
commercials appeared on the screen in front of his baseball
team-mates.  "They all just sat there and watched and I
wanted to say: 'Hey, I'm right here.  You don't have to watch
the television to see me'. "  Yet those who can raise stock
market values by nearly 4 billion dollars - the sum by which
the six companies advertised by Jordan rose in price during
rumours of his return - cannot easily be understood by
mortals whose lives are measured in nickels and dimes.  The
baseball players were only ever interested in Jordan the
basketball legend.

Far from inviting ridicule, Jordan's honest attempts at
baseball and his subsequent return to basketball have raised
his place in the consciousness of America perilously close to
deity.  A poster sold outside the United Centre shows Jordan
leaping into heavenly clouds under the slogan "The Second
Coming".  The only problem is that Jordan's Chicago Bulls
team-mates are falling to their knees in worship and now
Jordan himself is becoming confused, changing the number
on his jersey from his comeback 45 to his old treasured 23
for the second game of the National Basketball Association
(NBA) play-off series against Orlando Magic, in a desperate
attempt to recover ground already lost to time and in
defiance of the NBA.

It is not that Jordan is playing badly or that any critical
comparison can be made with the past.  Far from it.  Since
changing back to 23, the number that he said he would not
wear again in respect of his father who was murdered two
years ago, Jordan has scored 78 out of his team's total of 205
points in his past two games.  Yet, the Bulls, having lost the
third game on their own ground, are 2-1 down in the best-
of-seven series and displaying all the signs of a team short
on harmony.

Like so many of their opponents, they are being hypnotised
by Jordan.  "We need to play as a team," the Bulls' Bill
Wennington said after their stinging defeat.  Meaning you
expect Jordan to do everything? "A little, yes.  It is tempting
to rely on MJ taking care of business, but everyone has to
take responsibility. "

For the first quarter of that third game, Jordan took care of
business all right, scoring 18 points and reducing everyone
else to irrelevance.  Then a funny thing happened.  Jordan
woke up, came down from the rafters where his retirement
number 23 jersey still hangs and began to play as ordinarily
as the rest of his team.  It was as if he had realised how
inadequate he was making them look.  By the time the Bulls
had scratched their way to a three-point lead with four
minutes remaining, the spell had long gone.

Jordan fouled twice to give Magic a precious lead, missed a
shot, threw an intercepted pass and played so badly that
Nike, Wheaties, General Motors, the supports of Jordan's 30
million dollars a year off court empire, his private plane and
his two houses, must have been glad that Wall Street had
closed for the weekend.

Though Jordan outscored Shaquille O'Neal 40 to 28, O'Neal's
overall contribution was the more telling; 23 or 45, the
scoreboard showed the only significant numbers by the end.
Bulls 101, Magic 110.

For all the hype, O'Neal will never be in the same class as
Jordan, a matter of physique quite apart from ability.  O'Neal,
the taller by seven inches, the heavier by an astonishing
90lbs (300 to 210), does not have the suppleness to match
Jordan's lowdown twists and turns.  To be fair to him, Shaq
has never encouraged the comparison, however strongly
Reebok, his manufacturers, and the NBA have pushed his role
as the natural heir to His Airness, as Jordan is dubbed.  "He
still does things I can't even dream of, " he said.  He has
Jordan's autograph at home, too.

Like it or not, the Bulls-Magic series has become a personal
duel, fought on several fronts.  Jordan v Shaq, Nike Empire v
Planet Reebok, Gatorade v Pepsi, old v new.  A contrast of
generations and styles as well as talents.

While Jordan's face adorns the Wheaties box, the ultimate
symbol of American wholesomeness, and the cover of a book
of philosophical thoughts entitled I Can't Accept Not Trying,
Shaq, not as eloquent but smart enough to keep his image
clean, is belting out the words to a rap called Nobody from
his second album, Shaq Fu - the Return.  "I ain't nothing but a
hooper-slash-rapper. "

For the NBA, the match was made in a marketing heaven.  In
the Jordan interregnum, the NBA suffered from falling
television ratings - viewing figures were 31 per cent down
for the NBA finals last season - and the brat pack of new
young multi-millionaire players whose responsibilities to the
game extended no further than their wallets.  MJ v Shaq has
concentrated minds on positive values once more.  The first
game in the series attracted 40 million viewers, the highest
for a semi-final in NBA history.  No wonder that the NBA
took an enlightened view of Jordan's rule-breaking change of
number.

Everyone is happy, it seems, except Jordan, who has
remained untypically silent since being heavily criticised
after the first game.  As he left after the third game, Jordan
took a detour through the interview room, but only to say
that he would not be saying anything, a crime is greater than
defeat in America.  The move bore the MJ stamp: I am still in
control.

Moments later, he was ushered past his own statue by his
security guards.  However, Jordan leads the Bulls to the
fourth title in five years, they will have to recast the statue
gold and add a line to his inscription.  He did come back.
@
2.5
Sweat pours off Michael Jordan's shaven head as he plants
his left leg forward in the practice cage and raises his bat for
the umpteenth time.  The pitcher throws.  Jordan swings, the
baseball sails over the billboards more than 100 yards away
and lands, unseen, with a clang.  "I hit my car," he says
triumphantly.  "I hit my car."

The children clustered by the dugout clutching pictures and
caps for Jordan to sign hurtle off towards the car park in
pursuit of the prize.  They are still glued to his every
movement, desperate for any souvenir and yet they are not
sure if they still believe the advertising slogan that tells
them they want to be like Mike.  They want Mike to be like
Mike, but somehow he is not.

The Michael Jordan they want is the slam-dunker supreme,
the man whose extraordinary talent as a basketball player
turned him into an American icon, made him the highest
earning sportsman in the world and put his face on millions
of T-shirts, his name on millions of pairs of sports shoes.

What they have got is an ageing rookie baseball player
struggling to hold his place in a minor league team.  They
would like to put it all behind them, forget it ever happened
and return to the way it used to be but Jordan is in pursuit of
a dream.

He forsook his position at the heart of the all-conquering
Chicago Bulls when he announced last October that he was
retiring from basketball.  Soon afterwards, he said that he
was going to pursue what had become his last great sporting
ambition: a place on the roster of a Major League baseball
club.

His performances in spring training were not good enough to
gain a place with the Chicago White Sox, so he was sent to
their farm team, the Birmingham Barons, a double A side
that plays in the west division of the Southern League
against other minnows like the Memphis Chicks and the
Chattanooga Lookouts. Some players make it to the major
leagues from here but the consensus among commentators is
that Jordan will not be among them.

The new stadium and the broad area  of turf that is Jordan's
field of dreams lies a few miles off Interstate 495, ten miles
from Birmingham, Alabama, deep in the South.  The heat is
oppressive and grasshoppers flit from seat to seat in the
afternoon sun.  The crowds keep coming to see this circus act
that has come to town and the average attendance of   6,200
is more than 2,000 up on last year.  But the novelty is
wearing off a little and worse, Jordan is "slumping".

He started the season well but his batting average has
plummeted in recent weeks and on Monday, he hit a new low
against the Huntsville Stars.  He reached first base only once
in four appearances at the batting plate and he squandered
that gain when he was caught trying to steal second.  He is
quicker than average between bases but his 6ft 6in frame
makes it more difficult for him to dive for safety in the
conventional way.  When he is not batting, Jordan plays at
right field, deep in the outfield.  The coach puts the
inexperienced players there because the ball rarely reaches
them.  Jordan touched it twice against Huntsville.  The second
time he fumbled and allowed a runner to gain an extra base.
Throughout the rest of the three-hour contest, he stood
almost still in his position.

Like caging an animal, it seems an almost criminal waste of
his athletic ability, the antithesis of the frenzy of energy he
contributed to the Bulls.

The Barons, who won the Southern League title last year, lost
6-1 and are now next to bottom of the league. But the
statistics that show Jordan has not yet hit a home run and
has been struck out more often than any other team
member, only tell a small part of the story.  His failures make
his quest for his goal more noble, his willingness to expose
his fallibilities is an example to the crowd and to the
arrogant.

The children, whose despair at their idol's failures almost
turns to anger as they mount up, ignore the title of book
many of them hand to him to sign: I Can't Accept Not Trying:
Michael Jordan on the Pursuit of Excellence.  His coach says
the 31-year-old is the hardest worker on a team most of
whose members are several years younger than he, that he
has improved immeasurable since the beginning of the 150-
game season he is committed to play.

"I'm having a great time," Jordan said as he moved towards
the dugout after practice.  "That's something that hasn't
really changed despite the recent difficulties.  I'm doing
something that I truly enjoy and it's a lot of fun.  I don't
know what it is about baseball.  I grew up with it.  I always
played it.

"You can be carried by the rest of the team in basketball but
here you're alone on the plate and it's up to you.  I love this
game and that's why I'm doing it."

It is certainly not for the money.  Jordan earns baseball's
minimum wage of $850 a month, plus $16 a day for meal
allowances, compared to the $30 million a year he was
estimated to earn at the height of his fame with the Bulls
when advertisements for Nike, Gatorade and McDonnell's,
among others, swelled his relatively modest $3 million
salary.  None of the advertisers has dropped him and he is
still ranked ninth in the list of most attractive sport
personalities to advertisers.

"The things I could do on a basketball court weren't amazing
people any more," he said.  "The only way I could go was
down and that was a side of my game I didn't want people to
see.  There was nothing left for me to prove, I've had a lot
more fun in baseball than my last two years in the NBA.

"I found that more of the basketball guys were playing not
for the love of the game but for money and prestige.  There's
always a teeny-weeny possibility I might go back next year.
But right now, it's real teeny and real weeny."