Sports

RETURN WOULD BE ERR, JORDAN

MICHAEL Jordan is coming back to play basketball again next season. At least, that’s what Sports Illustrated wants us to believe in its latest issue that quotes a source, very close to Jordan, saying he’s 90 percent committed to making a comeback with the Wizards.

Let’s hope this is another false alarm and Jordan will stay just where is: retired and living off his legacy. At a time when the NBA is starting to accept life after His Airness, the last thing it really needs is continuing rumors of his return.

We won’t bother to analyze the merits of the SI story authored by columnist Rick Reilly. On the surface, it wreaks more of speculation than investigation. It was only a week ago that Jordan told the Washington Post, “There was a 99.9 percent chance that I am not coming back.”

And for Jordan to become a player again he would have to sell his ownership interest in the Wizards and the Capitals, something he has said he is reluctant to do.

It’s still fuzzy whether his rights as a player still belong to the Bulls. And do we actually believe he’s going to settle for the veteran minimum salary? Please.

“He wouldn’t play for the veteran minimum,” scoffed his agent David Falk. “He’d play for the Michael Jordan minimum. And that would only come about if every team chipped in $2 million or $3 million because that’s how much it would mean.”

You really think the Knicks are forking over $3 million for a Jordan comeback? Not while Jeff Van Gundy is still breathing.

It tugs at our sentimental strings to think he and the overweight and outshape Charles Barkley, who couldn’t make it through his final season without injuring his knee – might team together for one last triumphant run with the Wizards. They might as well add Patrick Ewing to the group and make it the All-Geezer team.

No disrespect to Michael, but the NBA doesn’t need its fans clinging to the past at a time when it desperately needs to market its future.

This year’s NBA All-Star Game in D.C. offered a solid springboard. Stephon Marbury, Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant and Vince Carter staged a thrilling game won by the East All-Stars when they showed Jordan-like determination in rallying from a 21-point fourth-quarter deficit.

Other stars like Portland’s Rasheed Wallace, Sacramento’s Chris Webber and Orlando’s Tracy McGrady are coming into their own. They are the NBA of today and tomorrow. Jordan is the king of its most recent past.

Sure, his return would be a spectacle, captivating the sports world and perhaps even increasing the league’s declining television ratings on the nights he performed. But Jordan won’t be playing with the old Bulls. He’ll be playing with the Wizards, as bad a basketball team as there is in the NBA.

At 38, even His Airness would be hard-pressed to make the Wizards a winner. His legacy is sure to suffer. Jordan went out the way all athletes dream about, hitting his final shot to win his sixth NBA Championship. The picture of him posing on his follow through, right hand held high, wrist cocked, is forever etched in our minds. But it’s an image that will be sullied if he returns a Wizard.

To return as a player is to admit his failure as an owner. That was supposed to be his next challenge. He was supposed to build the Wizards into a winner and seemed headed in the right direction when he unloaded Juwan Howard and released Rod Strickland. But maybe Jordan has given up on building a winner as an owner, the same way he gave up on baseball.

The NBA needs to move on, needs to develop its new stars. Jordan came along after Magic and Bird, who followed Dr. J and Kareem, who followed Wilt and Russell.

Change is inevitable. To cling to the past is to show discouragement with the present. The NBA needs to move forward. It needs to get on with life after Jordan. The owners and executives of the league should understand that, including Jordan.