The Air Up There : Jordan May Not Fly as Much as in His Early Years, but He Still Soars Over the NBA

By SCOTT HOWARD-COOPER

Feb. 2, 1996 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Meanwhile, back at the other comeback . . .

Michael Jordan rolls on, dominant as ever and a much different player at the same time. He leads the league in scoring, was shooting 50% before Thursday’s game at Sacramento and had broken 30 points in 24 of 42 games, including 14 of the last 19. He was third in the league in steals. Not worrying about exploding to the rim anymore, he is reading defenses better than ever. He’s doing everything but hitting the cutoff man.

Oh, yeah. That baseball thing. He left. He came back. He struggled.

Then came the summer of ’95. He hit the weights, getting his basketball legs back.

Tim Grover, his personal trainer of seven years, said he had never seen Jordan work harder, starting the day after the Chicago Bulls were eliminated from the playoffs, instead of during spare moments away from the golf course. When he was in L.A. to make a movie, Warner Bros. erected the Jordan Dome, an enclosed gym that included a regulation court, and guys like Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal, Dennis Rodman, Reggie Miller and Larry Johnson stopped by for evening pickup games.

He came back anew for the start of the 1995-96 season and no one has touched him since.

“All the hype, all the press talking that his game wasn’t back, that he didn’t look the same,” said Ron Harper, the Bulls’ other starting guard. “Ballplayers were talking trash to him. They ain’t talking trash this year to him, I’ll guarantee you that.”

It has already been shown that Michael Jordan and the desire to prove himself, or prove others wrong, is a lethal mix. Some people don’t learn, but here’s the rule in a nutshell: Don’t taunt.

But some doubted. And they taunted.

“I utilize the expectations of the media and the fans to my benefit from a practice standpoint,” Jordan said. “Once I’m in the game, I’ve got to set my own expectations and live up to those.

“Every minute of a game, people are comparing that to my previous time that I played. If I miss three free throws in a row, it’s, ‘Well, he never would have done that two, three, four years ago, so he’s losing something.’ ”

When, in fact, the only thing he was losing was his youth.

“Everyone keeps saying, ‘At 32, it’s tough for him,’ ” said Jordan, who tonight makes his first Forum appearance since Nov. 20, 1992. “I took two years off. I didn’t play for two years, so my body didn’t take the same type of beating. If I would have played the two extra years, I’d probably be like [Charles] Barkley. I feel physically good.

“I’m happy with my game right now. I think I can do what my mind asks me to do physically and do it consistently, which is where I was two years ago. Can I take off from the free throw line like I did in the slam-dunk contest? Probably not. Would I want to do it? Probably not. But I’m doing what I think I’m capable of doing to help them win, and that’s the most important thing.”

If people had become bored with his game because it had reached such a high level, as Jordan himself has suggested, he took care of that last season. He quit baseball and returned to the NBA after a 17-month layoff in time to play in 17 regular-season games--and shoot 41.1%, easily a career low, although his average of 6.9 rebounds was better than his lifetime average.

“He still had too much baseball in him last year, by far,” said Jerry Krause, the Bulls’ vice president for basketball operations and a former veteran scout for four major league teams. “He didn’t have a training camp. He hadn’t played in a year and a half and he hadn’t had a training camp, so that wasn’t Michael Jordan that you saw last year.”

Neither, in the traditional way, is the Michael Jordan we’re seeing this year.

On offense, Air Jordan makes only occasional appearances now. It’s not a paparazzi game anymore.

He’s more of a jump shooter now. He doesn’t drive and slash as much as he used to, but he does post up a lot, get the ball and then go to work close to the basket. Often, with the Bulls starting two 6-foot-6 players in the backcourt, that creates favorable matchups, sometimes against undersized point guards.

“I don’t think he’s jumping and dunking on people as much,” Knick guard Derek Harper said. “I think now, Michael is playing with his head more than anything. He’s playing a very smart game.”

Said Bull Coach Phil Jackson: “I think it has evolved, because he’s much more conscious about taking his time to figure out where the defenses are. He’s not always in the attack mode now. Sometimes, it’s passing the ball, just drawing the double teams and finding the open guys.”

It helps that he is with the Bulls. Scottie Pippen is a great ballhandling forward, good enough that he can start the offense and give Jordan a rest from true point guard duties. Luc Longley is a very good passing center. Likewise Toni Kukoc as a 6-10 forward.

And then there’s defense. Pippen is a star in that area too. Dennis Rodman remains a factor, even if he has spent the last couple years cheating away from his man and ignoring proper defensive rotations to go for rebounds. And if there are no inside forces among the centers, no one to provide the same presence as Bill Cartwright did during the three-peat years, there are two veteran 7-footers, Bill Wennington and James Edwards, and a third, Longley, who was just put on the injured list.

Jordan? A six-time selection to the all-defensive team, as voted on by coaches, he has spent his 11th pro season chasing point guards around.

It could eventually wear, all the energy spent trying to corral the little guys. He will turn 33 in two weeks, after all, and is averaging 38.1 minutes a game, a heavy load.

On the other hand, Jordan has regained enough of the quickness, in his legs and arms, to make most others envious. And there are benefits to defending the point: He avoids a different kind of wear and tear--the bruising kind--by not getting pinballed while chasing shooting guards through screens and around picks set by power forwards with jutting hip bones.

“So now you keep him out in front,” Cleveland Coach Mike Fratello said. “Away.”

That, in turn, allows him to leak out for fastbreaks while Rodman, et al, crash the boards. From there, Jordan in the open court is still Jordan in the open court.

“He can turn it up defensively and be the great defensive stopper he wants to be when he has to,” Fratello said. “Right now, I think he picks and chooses when those moments are, because he’s a veteran guy.”

One so different and yet so much the same.

“The fact that he got back to where he is right now really shouldn’t surprise people because he such an incredible athlete,” Fratello said.

And Krause concluded, “Once he decided, it was easy for him. He’s Michael.”

Still.

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About Average

A look at Michael Jordan’s numbers this season compared to his career:

MINUTES

Season 38.1

Career 38.8

POINTS

Season 30.8