COMMENTARY : Jordan’s Choice: NBA or Gambling

Maybe the kindly shoe folks in Oregon should pitch in with the pro basketball folks in New York and buy Michael Jordan an island in international waters. Maybe they should hire Pete Dye to build a golf course.

They could put down an airstrip and bring in a 747 full of two-bit hustlers. They could do this right now. They could call the island Jordania. Maybe they should cause a light to glow from around Jordan’s head.

They could remind the two-bit hustlers that if they win a golf match against the god--it’s almost impossible to lose such a match--they will be paid 33 cents on the dollar, in installments, spread over a year’s time, not a word to the god’s wife. And if they write a book, they won’t be invited back.

Maybe the shoe folks should do all this for Jordan.

Or maybe not.

But unless somebody does something, Jordan may be in trouble all the time. He won’t quit gambling.

Jordan’s high-stakes gambling doesn’t bother some folks at all. They say it’s Jordan’s money and he’s got plenty of it and he can do with it what he wants. A buck and a quarter or a million and a quarter, no matter. They say he hasn’t bet on games, fixed games or fed gamblers information. They say he has the right to burn his money, eat his money, paper his walls with his money. They say he can gamble away his money in casinos, at poker tables and on golf courses.

Sure he can. As long as he quits playing ball.

Gamblers don’t belong in sports.

They are vulnerable to extortion. They are vulnerable to temptations to bet on what they know best, their game. These vulnerabilities undermine the public’s confidence that the games are honest.

But Jordan doesn’t seem to care. It’s as if he lives his life by the gospel decreed in his shoe shill’s pitch. Just do it. As Pete Rose just did it and Magic Johnson just did it, Jordan just does it. He now has done it in such a way that his game has no choice but to slap him down, and hard.

Here’s the game’s greatest player, and he leaves New York City on an eight-hour trip to a gambling casino the night before an NBA playoff game. Now we learn that the game’s greatest player lost hundreds of thousands of dollars playing golf with a hustler who claims Jordan’s debt once reached $1.25 million.

At some point, this money talk turns serious. If Jordan’s income is $40 million a year, the $1.25 million is 1/32nd of that. To put it in real-world terms, a man making $50,000 would be out a serious $1,562.

So even if we don’t believe every word from the golf hustler, Richard Esquinas, some of what he says makes sense.

He says that Jordan wouldn’t pay $1.25 million and insisted on playing more. Down $900,000, Jordan negotiated to $300,000 and has paid $200,000 so far. Then Jordan wanted to hide it from his wife. Finally, Jordan wanted to pay in installments.

Alas, this Jordan sounds like a man in trouble, a man who can’t afford to lose the money. That’s bad enough, and it gets worse. Although Jordan admits that he bet with Esquinas, he says the amounts mentioned are “preposterous.” As to what the amounts are, Jordan says he didn’t keep records and doesn’t know if he won or lost.

Say what? He doesn’t deny paying Esquinas $200,000. Yet Jordan wants us to believe he doesn’t know if he won or lost.

Jordan can lie. He lied about a $57,000 check he sent to a convicted cocaine dealer two years ago. The check showed up when the cops investigated Slim Bouler for money laundering. Jordan called it a loan. Only under oath at the coke dealer’s trial did Jordan say the $57,000 was payment of a gambling debt.

Putting the best face on it, Jordan’s father, James, says there’s no gambling problem. The father said it’s “a competition problem.”

No, it isn’t. Jordan can’t bring himself to admit he lost to a golf hustler. That’s a reality problem.

Here’s a man-fantasy created by television hucksters. He can fly. He’s all smiles. He’s a sweetheart. He sells you sneakers with that smile. Sells underwear with his father. Sells hot dogs, soft drinks and cars because he can fly.

Small wonder, then, that this fantasy man is so far out of touch with reality that he can take an eight-hour trip to Atlantic City the night before a playoff game and not understand why people think it’s a news story.

It’s a news story because he’s an admitted high-stakes gambler who works in a game that for decades has banned everyone who gambles on their game.

There’s no good explanation for Jordan’s gambling trip. Not when he is already connected with Slim Bouler. Not when the NBA has scolded him about gambling. Not when he can do a hundred other things in New York. Not when he knows he owes big money to a golf hustler. Not when everyone in Atlantic City will call the newspapers.

There are two bad explanations, one worse than the other:

--He didn’t care what anyone thought. I’m Michael Jordan and you’re not.

--He knew it was the wrong thing to do, but he couldn’t not do it.

Pete Rose, to name another gambler, knew he shouldn’t be doing it. He did it anyway. Then he tried to hide it, and when it wouldn’t stay hidden, he lied about it. As witnesses testified against him, Rose’s last-line defense was a plaintive question. Who are you going to believe, that scum or Pete Rose?

The sad thing is that the question soon became: How are we able to know the difference?