Warning: Disneyland ahead. Check your better judgment at the gate. I apologize in advance if I’m getting taken for a roller-coaster ride by His Slyness.
Inhale, exhale: I’m starting to think Michael Jordan will soon be playing for the Chicago Bulls.
Deeper breath: I also believe Jordan will talk Grant Hill and/or Tim Duncan into joining him in Chicago next season.
The mere thought of a lineup of Jordan, Duncan, Hill, Toni Kukoc and Elton Brand makes me want to kiss Jerry Krause on the lips.
Of course the Penguin is probably the only Chicagoan privately fuming over Batman’s stunning reappearance and performance Wednesday after Bulls practice.
Just when we thought Jordan couldn’t even shoot around with his kids because of the index finger he badly cut just before announcing his retirement, boom, he shows up for a high-noon shootout with Corey Benjamin. When Benjamin was drafted in 1998, he was said to have the athletic and leaping ability of a young Michael Jordan. The old one never forgot that description.
When Benjamin talked some good-natured trash to Jordan after Saturday night’s loss in Atlanta, saying he wished Michael were still around so he could take him, you could almost hear the “eek-eek-eek” from “Psycho.” Once more the crazed competitor had been unleashed. Jordan showed up Wednesday and took Benjamin to one-on-one school as if driving his carpool, jumping ahead 10-3 before leaving the kid with a shred of dignity, 11-9.
So what did it mean? Jordan doesn’t do anything without complex calculation, and his actions always speak truer than his words. Were his three NBA appearances in the season’s first week (Atlanta, Madison Square Garden, the Berto Center) designed only to generate another surge of product-selling publicity? Don’t think so.
Was he only at practice to “boost morale,” as he claimed? No.
Several close to him say he’s bored to tears without basketball, his passion, his ultimate happiness. He’s tired of losing at golf to various fastest guns who want to take money off Michael Jordan. He’s had 16 months to regenerate a 36-year-old body that has never blown a knee or an Achilles. Wednesday he wanted to take it for a little test drive. Wednesday proved he could play three or four more years, if he could recruit a Hill and/or Duncan.
The Bulls have the cap room and the coach. Jordan has been able to size up Tim Floyd through the firsthand experience of former teammate Ron Harper. Jordan now knows Floyd is a good guy and a sharp tactician without the sort of ego he has to wear on his Armani sleeves. It might not have worked for Iowa State coach Floyd to replace Phil Jackson at the helm of a Jordan-Pippen-Rodman Titanic. But this has possibilities. With Jordan, even the addition of former Bulls Will Perdue and B.J. Armstrong starts making sense.
Jordan sees that this year’s Eastern Conference is laughably weak. Several coaches and GMs said Wednesday that if Jordan could return at his 1998 level–he struggled in 1995 when he returned from baseball–the Bulls could go from worst to first in the East. Several also believe Jordan’s pride has been irritated by all the Hollywood hoopla over how Jordan couldn’t have done it without Zenmaster Jackson, the Lakers’ “savior.” Maybe Jordan would like to prove he could win without Jackson.
“We know Michael loves challenges,” NBC analyst and former Bulls coach Doug Collins said. Collins won’t be surprised if Jordan decides he can win with the Bulls: “But he better do it quickly. He wouldn’t want them to come back from that West Coast trip at 0-10. That might be too deep a hole.”
Yet would Jordan want to risk joining such a young team for a potentially humiliating game against Jackson’s Lakers a week from Friday? Much tougher question: Could Jordan and Krause ever bury the hatchet Jordan occasionally wanted to bury in Krause? Has Krause realized he’ll never rebuild a champion without Jordan? Krause needs Jordan as much as Jordan needs Krause’s Bulls.
Jordan risked his pride and perhaps even a little of his legacy to play Benjamin in front of reporters. Perhaps a small dose of that most powerful drug–winning–will bring him back.
Or perhaps some of us just needed to dream about it.
