Say It Ain’t So, Mike

Hearing that you’ll never see Michael Jordan play competitive basketball again is like hearing that sunsets have been canceled. That star-filled skies have been revoked. That babies are no longer allowed to smile.

Hearing that Michael Jordan has retired, no matter how much you expected it or prepared for it, is like taking a bounce pass to the chest.

You are in awe of a guy for 16 years, from the tight-shorts days in North Carolina to the baggy-swagger years in Chicago, and yet when he quits, all you can do is gasp and utter one word.

No.

Not now.

Not when the NBA is hitting the road three months late with a junker season sputtering with greed.

Not when the only thing that can make us remember why basketball is so great is its greatest player ever.

Not when he is leaving us with too many big mouths, small consciences, and Spree.

The worst possible time for us.

The best possible time for him.

Michael Jordan leaves before soil

ing his $200 shoes with what will be the grubbiest season in NBA history.

He leaves before scratching his image on a potentially mediocre Bulls team that probably even he could not have rescued into respectability.

He leaves not with his head down, but with his hand in the sky.

His right hand.

The one that hung in the Salt Lake City air last spring at the completion of the 17-foot jump shot with 5.2 seconds remaining that gave the Bulls the victory that clinched Jordan’s sixth NBA championship.

Remember how he kept his hand out and his arm extended after the shot, calmly holding it there while all history erupted around him?

Like he wanted children to learn from it, and the rest of us to remember it?

As with darn near everything else he tried for 16 seasons at North Carolina and the NBA, it worked.

His hand is hanging there still.

It was a moment become a sculpture.

With apologies to Ted Williams, it was perhaps the best last moment in the history of sports.

Williams quit on a home run, but it didn’t win a World Series.

Michael Jordan didn’t retire at the top. He retired while dancing across it.

In that one second Jordan taught us much about grace, the last in a long line of lessons.

By being cut from the high school basketball team, he offered a story of perseverance that is still being related to schoolkids today.

By making the shot that won the national championship for North Carolina at the end of a quiet freshman season, he taught us about patience. How many great college players today would be deferential enough to sit so quietly during their first year, that the public would never even think about them until they hit the biggest shot in the biggest game of the season?

With his 26 game-winning shots in the final seconds of NBA games, he consistently taught us about handling yourself under pressure.

Then when he quit the game for most of two seasons between 1993 and 1995, he taught us even more.

We’ve all heard the reports. He quit because the NBA was pressuring him to stop gambling. He quit before the NBA threw him out.

Whatever the reason, instead of sticking around to fight his demons in what could have been an ugly battle, he simply walked away until they died a natural death.

It was as classy as his baseball career was silly, but there was even a lesson in that.

If you really want to do something, do it even if it others might think you are making a fool of yourself. Look at Michael Jordan. He did.

His return to the NBA after that brief sabbatical was accompanied by one of the most famous faxes in sports history, the two-word missive that read, “I’m back.”

He hadn’t lost his sense of the dramatic. He continued to prove that for three more full seasons, all championships.

Even during the NBA lockout, he showed it. He attended one meeting when the players’ case was still strong, but disappeared when they lost all leverage.

And when the lockout was finally settled and the players were running around the streets of New York in abominable snow suits with outrageous quotes?

Michael Jordan is in the Bahamas, spokesmen said. Vacationing with family, reports said. Spotted playing golf, sources confirmed.

Far away from the muck.

Figuring out his future where a decent man should figure out his future, with family and peace.

You know what I thought when I heard this? You really want to know?

I thought, Michael Jordan is fooling us again. He is paying somebody to claim he is on vacation. He has hired a look-alike to sign his name at the golf shop.

He is in the Bahamas, all right. He is jogging around the Bahamas.

He is lifting weights on the beach, and running stairs at an old church, and playing hoops in a sweaty gym with nine hardened beach bums.

He is planning on showing up in Chicago on Jan. 18, the first day that players can be signed, and announce that he is ready for one more year.

Then, just like that, he isn’t.

How did you hear the news? I heard it late Monday from a co-worker who saw it flash across his screen.

He didn’t say, “Hmmm, Michael Jordan has retired.”

He said, “Damn!”

Then he hit the keyboard.

And I knew.

I also know that this means the Lakers have a better chance at winning this year’s NBA championship. And Shaquille O’Neal has the opportunity to become the league’s next marquee name.

Jordan retires on a cold day in Chicago, and everything out here is suddenly that much brighter.

I know, but, for the moment anyway, I don’t care.

Today, nothing in the NBA is as important as what is missing from the NBA.

We will never see Michael Jordan play competitive basketball again. That right hand will have to hold us forever.