Sports

Jordan legend maintains rarefied Air

Up, up & away! Michael Jordan soars toward the rim in one of his iconic slams in the 1988 dunk contest. (
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Somehow he turns 50 years old today, though that merely is the deceit of a birth certificate. Forever he will be 28 years old, at the peak of his powers, filling arenas and thrilling fans and turning an entire generation of people — worldwide — on to the splendid game of basketball.

Forever, Michael Jordan will be able to fly.

He was never ours, but that never seemed to matter — never seems to matter, not here, not when we see greatness. Any number of citizens, after all, with any sense of rhyme or reason could have dubbed Stan Musial “The Man,” but it took the denizens of Brooklyn to do it, to mutter, “Here comes that man again,” again and again, as Musial readied to bash another baseball against an Ebbets Field fence, to make Stan The Man.

Jordan? We saw him play as an 18-year-old, the fifth game of his collegiate career at North Carolina, when he scored

15 points to help the eventual champion Tar Heels blast Rutgers at Madison Square Garden, 59-36, in front of 11,535 on Dec. 19, 1981. He mostly was overlooked that night, a freshman lost among upper-class stars.

That never would happen again. Ever.

His first professional Garden game, as a Bull, he dropped 33 points and added eight rebounds and five assists against the Knicks of Bernard King and Rory Sparrow Nov. 8, 1984, a 121-106 win for Chicago. By the time he would say farewell to Broadway, he was stripped of so many of his peerless gifts, saddled by age, cloaked in the loud, ugly vestments of the Washington Wizards and perched on the wrong side of 40 … and he still managed to light up the Knicks of Shandon Anderson and Howard Eisley for 39 on March 9, 2003.

The Knicks actually won that game, and though the mind’s eye may insist differently, they won more than they lost against Jordan in New York — 20-19 when he was a Bull, 2-2 as a Wizard. Jordan, of course, always managed the final word, whether

it was his mythical double-nickel splurge on March 28, 1995, or all the times, so countless they blur together, when he would make a shot, make a steal, or find a wide-open teammate in the final seconds of another playoff season, sending the Knicks, always, off into Next Year.

“I never expected New York to like me,” Jordan said during his last go-round, “but I think they respected me.”

He averaged 32.8 points across 80 games against the Knicks as a Bull, his team was 58-22 (including playoffs) in those 80 games, he nudged his numbers up to 33.1 in the playoffs and forever will occupy the memory banks and scar tissue of Knicks fans.

Yes, he’s right. New York never did like him. But yes, he’s right: The big town respected the hell out of him. Then. Now. Forever.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com