DENVER – The one percent chance Michael Jordan leaves open for his return is three entire percent less than David Falk’s commission and still more valuable to His Airness than stock in Nike. ‘Because it’s my one percent and not yours,’ Jordan said Wednesday. ‘I chose to walk away knowing I could still play. That’s exactly the way I wanted it.’
And the way few of us will get it, too, as we plod to the next mortgage payment, lament having stayed one hour too long in Atlantic City, resist the urge to tell the boss to shove it. We give the notion of going on our own terms a romantic quality that raises the height of Jordan’s pedestal.
His probably was the highest ever in the history of sports. And what made him the greatest basketball player who ever lived was the fear of falling off, a phobia that will probably, but not absolutely, prevent a second return.
Be assured that as boredom sets in again, the ultimate competitor will at least contemplate another comeback, the rights to which he has earned, too, as long his good grace endures. Watching Wayne Gretzky, two weeks from his 38th birthday, hovering near the NHL assist lead, racing with his arms up like an 18-year-old to celebrate his overtime pass that pushed the Rangers to the .500 mark Wednesday night is a reminder that winding down gradually can be honorable and satisfying, too.
‘At the end of the day, it’s the game itself I still love,’ Gretzky said the next day. ‘Some guys enjoy it more than other guys. That’s the way it’s always going to be. I was with Marcus Allen a couple weeks ago. He said he could still play, but just got tired of it.
‘I don’t really know Michael except to say hello, or as a thankful parent who can’t say enough for what he has done for my kids and kids all over North America. And I don’t even think Michael’s closest friends can relate or understand what he goes through physically and mentally to play. Nobody has earned the right to do what he wants more he. I think everybody has a different feeling for when they finally want to say ‘I’ve had enough.’
‘The only argument I’ve ever been in about a guy retiring was about Evander Holyfield. The guy said he should retire after beating Tyson. I said ‘If he’s the best, why should he leave, if he doesn’t really want to? Just because he won?”
Or, just because he relishes the satisfaction of never giving his closest rivals a last opportunity to beat him, which is the only thing Jordan said at his retirement press conference Wednesday that Gretzky really wonders about. ‘I guess he had the kind of relationship with a guy like Patrick Ewing that he could say it,’ said Wayne. ‘And I really don’t believe Michael is going to play again, anyway.
‘But I always feel if you cross a bridge, it’s amazing how many times you have to come back over it.’
From one icon’s mouth to a basketball God’s ear: Retiring untouchable is wonderful – if you can do it. But down here, among us greatest players ever who have surprised ourselves by our acceptance of mortality, we still hate losing but can tolerate less-than-perfect endings due to our love of the game.
A year ago, John Elway, fairy-tale winner of a Super Bowl in his fourth crack at age 37, passed on the opportunity to ride into one of sport’s best-ever sunsets.
‘I wasn’t ready to quit competing,’ he said this week. ‘We had a great football team and I wanted to try to defend. This is what I came back for, situations like this.’
Today could be his last one at Mile High Stadium, maybe anywhere. Should the Jets pull a not-improbable upset in today’s AFC Championship Game, Elway, who has missed four starts with rib and hamstring problems, probably will leave the field for the final time.
His coach, Mike Shanahan, thinks there is a 90 percent chance that win or lose either today or Jan. 31 in Miami, Elway is retiring, which on top of the loss of Jordan doubles the sporting world’s weekly, monthly, yearly or millennium’s quota for irreplaceable losses.
Elway has won more games (148) at a higher percentage (.643) than any quarterback in NFL history, If the Jets get it in the end today, it will be the 47th time he has led the Broncos on a winning fourth quarter or overtime drives. Elway is 12-7 in the postseason, 4-1 in AFC Championship Games, second all-time behind Dan Marino in yards, attempts, completions, total offense.
He is also first in times sacked, which is why Elway understands why Jordan, still feeling close to his physical peak, can’t hear the same bell that tolls for the quarterback.
‘I don’t liken my situation to his,’ said Elway. ‘There is a guy who was the best of all time, who has won six championships, so what else can he do?
‘He still has a lot left and can play five or six more years. I’m more in a year-to-year situation in a much more physical game. You never lose the fact you want to play. It’s just that physically, do you want to go through all this?’
Elway has felt like he has been playing with house money ever since an arm he thought he blew out in a 1996 exhibition game regenerated itself. Plus, the weight of three blowout Super Bowl losses came off his back with the victory over Green Bay.
He wants to win again, but knows it probably won’t alter his place in history any more than one loss in The Finals in his late thirties would have clouded Jordan’s.
‘If John could just play on game days, he might play another five or six years,’ Shanahan said. ‘But as we all know, there is a lot of time in the offseason, a lot of soreness during the season when you are 38 years old.’
The Mondays get worse while the Sundays stay good as ever. Gretzky knows.
‘The older you get, the more you become aware of how great winning is and how bad losing is,’ he said. ‘I want to be careful to put this in the right words, but I think there is more pressure for me now than there is on those [Edmonton] championship teams.
‘The pressure seemed enormous at the time but as I look back I realize that those teams were so great, nobody was going to beat us but ourselves. We didn’t realize that. Now I die with winning and losing even more, so there is more pressure than 15 years ago.’
He also knows that he still thrives on it, to the point it can lift him on the treadmill for his summer workouts. ‘I don’t profess to be a guy who likes doing 200 situps or lifting weights,’ Gretzky said. ‘But I love the game and that’s what I have to do to play it. So I do enjoy [the workouts], I guess.’
Jordan, who hadn’t touched a barbell since draining both the winning shot and himself on June 13, had come to doubt whether he still did. If he is not as burned out as he really believes, he’ll be back within a year, deciding that, like Elway, Gretzky, all the greats who have aged gracefully and endearingly, Michael Jordan, too, has to get it all out of his system.