There’s Only One Fair Way to Pick MVP

When Michael Jordan finds himself in a jam, a gridlock, an ambush, an impasse, a quandary or a cul-de-sac, he always has the ultimate escape route--up.

The greatest creative minds of world history--your Platos, your Thoreaus, your Confuciuses--have done their most productive thinking by going where they can be alone, and so it is with Jordan. He rises above his earthly problems and into the peace and solitude of the stuff after which he was nicknamed. Air.

It’s amazing to watch Jordan climb into his private airspace and make those high-level command decisions.

Air Jordan to tower. Visibility is good here, although there appears to be some pockets of turbulence at lower altitudes, so I’m going to take it on up another foot, just to be safe. Oops, I see four Knicks looming onto my radar screen on an intercept pattern. I think I could get ‘em to go for the old tongue fake and triple-pump 360 move, but now I see Horace Grant breaking to the hoop at 9 o’clock. Horace, do you read me?

Jordan’s game is especially impressive these days. The Confuciuses and Platos and Thoreaus, when they wanted to get away and do some serious work, they didn’t have to do it with a pulled groin. Or if they did, their trainers were crafty about keeping the news out of the papers.

Jordan’s Bulls are clinging to a 3-2 lead over the New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference semifinals, and Jordan’s groin is playing the series under protest.

I’ve never had a groin pull, but I’m told it’s no picnic, no relation whatsoever to a taffy pull or a tractor pull, although either of those activities can result in a pulled groin.

Tuesday night, Jordan and his aching groin went for 38 points in a loss to the Knicks at Madison Square Garden.

Jordan reportedly has said he is motivated in this series by Knick Coach Rick Pitino’s comments that he (Pitino) doubts that Jordan’s injury is anything but minor.

This was not only a bad psychological strategy by Pitino, stoking Jordan’s already blazing furnace, but it violated the ancient axiom: Before you judge me, walk a mile in my groin.

You get the feeling that if Jordan hadn’t sustained that injury in the line of duty, the league office would have deemed it necessary to ask Jordan to volunteer to have the groin pulled, in order that a semblance of competitive balance might be maintained in that playoff series.

You also get the feeling, in watching Jordan down the stretch during the regular season, and now in the playoffs, that groin or no, this is the greatest basketball player of all-time.

Granted, this is a tough call, since “all-time” goes way back, and also includes basketball’s Magic Johnson Era.

In a Magic vs. Air debate, Jordan obviously gets the nod in pure athleticism, while Magic is unsurpassed in pure leadership. But Magic can do some pretty amazing physical stuff, too, and Jordan has a highly advanced basketball brain.

Both play to the need. Magic needs to distribute the offensive action among his talented teammates, while Jordan needs to supply a big chunk of points and play disruptive defense.

Both roles require great skill, exercised within a team concept.

Which player filled his team’s need with the highest degree of efficiency this season?

I would tend to go with Magic, but maybe that’s because I saw him a lot more than I saw Jordan. I have a hunch that if I watched Jordan play every night, I’d be tempted to vote him the MVP, and the Heisman and the Cy Young and whatever other awards I could get ballots for.

With Jordan, to see him is to disbelieve him.

What basketball really needs this year is an National Basketball Assn. finals featuring Air and his Bulls vs. Magic and his Lakers. Why be satisfied with an antiseptic MVP voting, or endless and winless tavern debates?

This shouldn’t be like college football, where the ultimate battle is waged and the ultimate winner decided in polls.

Besides, Jordan is still a kid, 26, but it’s depressing to think that he might someday be remembered as the greatest athlete ever who never competed in his sport’s showcase event.

Tuesday, Jordan had an off night. He was hounded and pounded by Knick defenders who were working within the league’s ultra-liberal defensive guidelines. His shooting touch was a touch off, and he may have been showing the effects of playing three games in four days on a creaky groin.

Even so, he and his Bulls almost scored a great comeback victory in the hostile Garden.

At one point with the Bulls on defense, Jordan went face to face with a driving Patrick Ewing and blocked the 7-foot Ewing’s shot. Goaltending was called--incorrectly, I thought--but Ewing seemed impressed. Point guards don’t usually swat away Patrick’s inside power shots.

There’s no way the Knicks can stop this human comet two more games and win the series, and I’m convinced that the Pistons are in for a surprise in the conference finals.

Then the action will move on to Los Angeles, and we can get down to some real basketball.