COMMENTARY : Answers by Jordan Number Fewer Than the Questions

Same bald head, diamond earring. Same gold watch that could pay off a Beverly Hills mortgage for three months.

H-e-e-r-e’s Michael!

Yes it was, Michael Jordan, back after 15 days of silence. He put away the Suns in Game 1 of the NBA finals Wednesday night with a typical performance--31 points, seven rebounds, five assists--and answered some questions, and the world was back to normal.

Of course, there were a few questions he didn’t address.

Like his gambling adventure with Richard Esquinas.

“It’s behind me,” Jordan said. “It’s all about making history now, basketball-wise.”

It was actually all about getting the NBA’s marquee player out of his corner.

Heaven knows how many phone calls went back and forth from NBC Sports boss Dick Ebersol to NBA Commissioner David Stern to inquire just what $600 million buys you these days. By Tuesday, the word began to leak: Jordan was going to talk.

He warmed up before Wednesday’s game, doing a sit-down with his personal NBC valet, Ahmad Rashad.

This time, he did talk about the Esquinas charges and speculation he has a gambling problem.

Briefly, Jordan said with not-entirely-irrefutable logic that he doesn’t have a problem because no one close to him has told him he has one and because he isn’t flat broke.

“It was unfair,” Jordan told Rashad, “that I was being considered a criminal for doing something that was not illegal.

“Gambling is legal so what I bet--yeah, it’s a little bit more than I wanted to lose. I mean, I didn’t bet to lose it, but I lost it and I paid off all my debts. I didn’t want to go to the NBA or anyone else and say I lost $500,000. I’m going to pay my debts. I’m going to pay it that way.

(Jordan’s premise is wrong as gambling on the golf course--and most other places--is against the law. However, it is a law that is rarely enforced.)

“My family’s not starving. My wife, if I had a problem, would have left me, certainly would have came to me and said seek help.

“My family, my mother and father, we’re close-knit people and they have monitored me from when I was a kid, when I was born, up to where I am now. And if I ever had a problem, they never had a problem telling me that I had a problem.

“So they never came to me and said, ‘Michael, you’ve got a gambling problem.’ Or my wife never said anything. She handles finances in my household, she knows what comes in and what leaves. And she never said, ‘Michael, hey, you’ve got a problem.’ I think that’s something the media has taken it far greater than it what it is.

“Soon, when I walk away from this game, I think that’s the only thing that people gonna say was a bad thing about Michael Jordan. I didn’t commit a crime but ‘He gambled.’ And if that’s the least that I could have on my repertoire or my resume that, hey, I’m a competitor and I gambled, that’s a half a million dollars, yet I’m still living and I’m not broke. Financially I still think I’m set, I don’t have to work and I choose to do whatever I choose to do when I leave the game of basketball, then I’m happy.

“I enjoy it (gambling). It’s a hobby. If I had a problem, I’d be starving. I’d be hocking this watch, my championship rings. I would sell my house.”

Maybe he’s read too many dime novels.

Even Jordan, claiming too small a handicap (he’s said he’d like to play on the PGA Tour after he retires and how does it look to ask for strokes?), would require some time to go through his reported $35 million-a-year income. Let’s just say his problem or lack of one is still an open question and an unfailing embarrassment.

Jordan had previously denied Esquinas’ numbers (a $1.25 million gambling loss that Jordan whittled to $902,000 and negotiated down to $300,000), but gave no others. In all the excitement, Rashad forgot to ask.

It wasn’t a happy Mike who went back to his public obligation. He said after the game he was talking, “ ‘cause I feel like talking,” but he didn’t say much.

But at least he wasn’t Silent Mike of the Mum-Bulls any more.

“I wanted to talk to you and get some things off my chest,” he’d told Rashad, “so I could enjoy the history that we’re about to make.”

At least, he has that right. The Suns, who had little going for them aside from their home-court advantage, surrendered it Wednesday night, so now they’re down to a do-or-die Game 2 Friday.

Should they fall again, Mike will be on vacation by next weekend and woe be the relative or friend who mentions the Olympics, gambling as a problem or golf as an obsession.