New Wiz Kid

Seems like old times ...

Making the third (two in the NBA, one as a self-styled baseball prospect) and, presumably, last comeback of his storied career, Michael Jordan appeared Monday before the usual huge media crowd from places as far-flung as Japan and Australia to proclaim his devotion for his beloved “game of basketball” as the reason he’s returning so late in his own game.

But it’s not old times.

The lead headline in Monday’s Washington Post was “More Terrorism Likely, U.S. Warns.” If the nation’s capital, bereft of star athletes for 20 years, is now giddy at the thought of getting Numero Uno, or Numero 23, the nation is more sanguine.

The nation faces challenges that return games to their place, as child’s play. No overindulged/besieged top icon, be it the pouty Barry Bonds or even the graceful and charismatic Jordan, can waltz us away from that reality.

It was the same old cast, Jordan and “you guys,” his term for the media herd when it moseys in a direction he doesn’t like--like telling him he shouldn’t be doing this. It’s just that now the whole thing no longer seems momentous. It reminds you more of the forced gaiety of the Depression-era marathon-dance scenes in the movie, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”

Once, Jordan’s comings and goings seemed important and exciting. Now, everyone is doing his job by the numbers because it’s his job.

Jordan too. It’s just that the job he loves, and missed so keenly, is playing basketball. There has been so much overwrought reaction to Jordan’s return, it’s important to note what isn’t likely to happen next.

Jordan can’t save America, or be the story that makes everybody feel good again.

He won’t save the NBA, which wasn’t actually going out of business, although he is giving it a timely boost at TV-contract-negotiation time.

He won’t overshadow Kobe Bryant, Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady, who figure to be playing deeper into May and June, by which time Jordan, who’s joining a 19-win team, should have been on vacation for a month or two.

Most of all, Jordan won’t damage, or “taint,” his career, to use the current cliche.

Rocky Marciano retired undefeated. Muhammad Ali went out like a beach ball in a car wash, yet Ali remains Ali, and Marciano is still only Marciano.

Willie Mays cringed under fly balls he lost in the sun in the 1973 World Series, yet his legend remains intact, only with an unseemly ending.

A rueful Jordan, who’d been sitting on pent-up feelings all summer, showed up at the MCI Center in his first appearance since announcing his return in a prepared statement, dressed in black Air Jordan (what else?) sweats with a black cap, flanked by huge portraits of Wizards wearing Nos. 4 and 52. For those of you who don’t know (I had to ask), No. 4 is second-year man Courtney Alexander, No. 52 is third-year man Richard Hamilton. Humble as they are, they’re the best of what Jordan will play with this season.

Someone asked about competing with his legacy. Rising to his defense, Jordan launched into one of the most eloquent moments of his career.

“If you guys don’t know me by now, you will,” he said. “I’m not afraid to take on a challenge when people probably look at it as hurting things I’ve accomplished thus far .... I’m not afraid to take a step and if I fall, I fall, pick myself up and move on. If we all can learn something in life, it’s ... don’t be afraid to take on something that you believe that you’re capable of achieving. If my kids get anything from this, if you have a vision about something, go out and do it ...

“I’m not looking at this legacy thing as much as you guys are looking at it ... I appreciate it. I think it’s very caring of some of you guys. You guys are going to compare me to when I first came into the league, take off from the free-throw line [1988 in the All-Star dunk competition], winning championships in ‘91, ‘92, ‘93, ‘96, ‘97, ’98. I know that coming in. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love the game, and I don’t want to play the game.

“I love the game for the basic reasons of loving the game. Not that I’m going to leave as a champion .... That’s not what I’m all about. I’m all about challenges and going out and trying to see if I can achieve something.

“At the end of the day, if I can do it, great. If I don’t, I can live with myself. I stopped reading, I stopped listening because everybody was so negative about what I was trying to do. If I read every newspaper about the negative things I was trying to do, I swear I wouldn’t live in America.

“America’s supposed to be free will to do whatever you choose or whatever you want to do. That’s all I’m doing. I’m not committing a crime, I’m just trying to play a game of basketball. What if I’m tired of playing at the YMCAs and the Boys & Girls Clubs and I want to step up to the elite competition?

“If I can do it, great. If I can’t, that’s great too. But you can’t take my six championships away, you can’t take all the things that I’ve done, as much as you probably want to. I’m just going to play the game of basketball that I love.

“You say, well, the young dogs gonna chase me around. Well, I’m not going to bark too far away from them either. I’m not running from nobody

“I’m pretty sure they’re sitting back and welcoming the challenge. Guess what? I’m sitting back and welcoming the challenge too.

“I’m not walking in the dark here. I know what I’m capable of doing. I know what’s going to be expected of me. I know everybody’s putting my head on a block. Everybody’s motivated to come out and play against me. Everybody was motivated to play against me when I left, so things haven’t changed.”

By now, “you guys” know Jordan lives for challenges, like proving the press wrong. He reads skepticism as doubt and doubt as an insult, from the media or whomever, even his buddy, Charles Barkley, who voiced the popular and reasonable opinion that returning was a no-win proposition for Jordan.

“You know, I love Charles Barkley,” Jordan said. “You guys love him because he is going to give you quick comments, wit, whatever. I never utilize his evaluations for what I try to do as a basketball player. I tried to intrigue him by seeing if he could push himself to get to the challenge of possibly coming back and playing and Charles chose, from his own perspective and motivation, that he couldn’t...

“I believe differently ... than what Charles Barkley said. I think I can do what I set out in my mind to do. He can do whatever his mind set him out to do, and that’s his prerogative. But by no means am I going to let Charles Barkley decide what I choose to do.”

OK, he’s back. That much seems certain.

This is just the 38-year-old (39 in February) version of Michael Jeffrey Jordan, a little late bloomer from a little town in North Carolina, who turned the game into an art form, was deemed an icon, and learned to dominate at that too, whatever his shortcomings and contradictions offstage.

He wasn’t really a hero who placed himself in harm’s way for the sake of others, or even the plaster saint he played on TV, but through it all, there was an underlying decency coming from him, which shone through Monday.

NBA III may not turn out to be fun for him, but he still lives for the action, and he’s ready for the consequences.