Is This Jordan’s Finale in L.A.?

Thanks for the memories?

That’s a hard question for the Lakers since Michael Jordan’s highlights here--like the jumper he hit over Byron Scott that turned the ’91 finals into a Bulls’ rout--were lowlights for them.

But greatness is as greatness does, and we may never see Jordan back here after today in a Chicago Bull uniform, or any uniform. Of course, Jordan being Jordan, it’s also possible we’ll see him back in red and black, or a New York Knick uniform, a Laker one, or the Dodger outfield. OK, the Albuquerque outfield.

In lieu of the usual going-away gifts, since there will be no ceremony and might be no going away, we’ll have some prominent Lakers suck it up and remember him, the way he was, is, and yet may be.

JERRY WEST

West, the player on the NBA logo on the patch on Jordan’s uniform, knows something about greatness.

Despite all the adulation accorded to Jordan, West once called him the most underrated player in the game. Nothing he has seen since has changed his mind.

“I think you almost forget about his greatness because he seems to perform at that level all the time,” West says. “The extraordinary becomes the ordinary for him. I’ve just watched him compete at such a high level every night. When you watch, you start to marvel at someone truly unique. It’s one of those--I don’t say once in a lifetime, but it’s not certainly something that happens every day in the NBA. . . .

“I’ve always thought he was underrated because people look at him as a scoring machine. I really felt that for a number of years, he was the best defensive player in the league. . . .

“This is truly and unbelievably a remarkable player, but more importantly, this is a great guy and someone I admire beyond words.”

MAGIC JOHNSON

At the end of Johnson’s career, Jordan had become what Larry Bird had been, the rival Magic needed to measure himself against.

They met only once in the finals--Johnson was 31, Jordan was 28, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was retired, the Bulls won in five--with no quarter asked or given. Once, they announced plans to go at each other one-on-one on pay TV before the league scotched it.

Nevertheless, Magic knows who was best.

“My best was controlling the team and winning,” Johnson says. “He’s a better scorer, has better everything than I had.

“Larry has said it. We have always said that, both of us. When you know that you’re good, you don’t have a problem, giving it up for somebody else.

“We both know we dominated in our time. But you ask, were we as good as Michael Jordan? No. He does a little bit more--does this, does this, does this, better than both of us and we understand that.

“We did what we had to do. Nobody can take away his three championships, my five championships, but we’re not sitting here, thinking that we’re better than Michael Jordan.”

BYRON SCOTT

He was the unfortunate who lined up against Jordan in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.

If Jordan had a defining moment in the Forum, it was in the last seconds of regulation in Game 3 in the ’91 finals, with the series 1-1 and the Lakers leading by two points, when he dribbled the length of the floor and made a 17-footer, forcing overtime, where the Bulls won. They won the next two, too, ending Showtime forever and starting their decade.

Scott had a great view of that one.

“I remember saying, let’s not let him get the ball,” says Scott, who is playing for Panathinaikos in Greece, “and if he gets the ball, let’s try to put as much pressure on him as possible.

“He starts dribbling the ball up and I’m guarding him and I’m thinking, ‘OK, now where’s the help coming from? It’s going to come over and let’s get the ball out of his hands.’

“And all this time, he just keeps dribbling and dribbling and nobody comes. The next thing I know, he’s down to about the top of the key. Right about then, I knew, OK, he’s going to shoot the ball. It’s going to be a drive or a jump shot--and like I said, by this time, he’s pretty much hitting his jump shot on a regular basis.

“He took a couple more hard dribbles to get me going and just pulled up real quick and knocked it down. It was just like in football. It was a blown coverage.”

EDDIE JONES

Jones is from the generation that watched Jordan on TV before it got to the NBA, for whom Jordan was already a living legend.

He hates to concede anything to Jordan but then, he does wear Air Jordans.

“Michael was Michael at his best back then [the ‘80s],” Jones says. “The things he did back then, when he was just getting into the league, when I was really getting into basketball--I mean, you had no other choice but watching him. He was the best at it then. Still is the best at it. It was great watching it. I mean, you try to do the things he did but everybody can’t do it.

“There was a point I was in awe. When I was in college, watching him play, I was in awe but when you go against somebody and play you’re never in awe, you just want to go out and play. . . .

“Actually he did [sign Jones to wear the shoes]. He offered me money. He hand-picked everybody he wanted to wear these shoes--me, Ray Allen, Vin Baker, Michael Finley, Derek Anderson. It’s definitely an honor to be picked by the best player to play this game.”

DEL HARRIS

Harris watched Jordan grow up from the uncomfortable perspective of division rival. When Jordan broke in with the awful Bulls, Harris was with the respectable Bucks, but things were about to change.

“I was like everybody else,” Harris says. “There’s not anybody who can honestly say they did [think Jordan would dominate the game]. You show me some article written in the first year of his career that said this guy will be the best player that ever played the game. Now I’m sure there’s a ton of people who say they knew. . . .

“We were one of the top teams in basketball the decade of the ‘80s, had the fourth-best record in basketball. When he first came in the league, you could play Michael, back off and offer the outside shot, favor his right hand, make him shoot outside or go left. Well, then about a year went by and you had to move up a little bit. And by the third year, you couldn’t play one hand, he’d take you either way and now he goes left probably better than right. And by the fourth year, he was drilling threes.”

Harris now counts himself a friend of Jordan’s, so if this really is it for Mike. . . .

“Oh, it’d be bittersweet,” Harris says, laughing. “I’ll be glad to see him go, I can tell you.”