Today, I regret to inform you that I have done something I vowed never to do.
I tried to avoid it'really, I did. I do not blame any one event or person. It just happened.
I wrote a column about Michael Jordan. Please forgive me.
Maybe every possible story regarding Jordan's return has already been written. I will not claim to have a new take on the topic, but I have a take nonetheless.
Whether you think it is good, bad or ugly, No. 23 is back. Clearly, his return to the court is terrific for the game of basketball. I do not know much about NBA Commissioner David Stern, but if he has three sons, they ought to be named Michael, Jeffrey and Jordan.
Three years ago, Jordan exited the game in the best possible way, after sinking a championship-clinching jumper. The fans know it was a storybook ending. Jordan knows it too, though.
And he does not care.
Jordan does not care that he joins a Washington team that won only 19 games last season. During the news conference announcing his return, Jordan admitted he was in the 'teaching type of mindset' as he joined the Wizards.
Come again? Is this the same Jordan who allegedly cheated at 'Go Fish!' to beat a teammate's mother? Is this the same Jordan who supposedly was angered enough when calls were not going his way in practice that he threw a punch?
Maybe Jordan has become realistic in his old age, but to believe that being the best is not on his mind is foolish, at least to this observer.
As he announced his return, Jordan spoke cryptically of rising to the challenge ahead of him. I still am puzzled about his intentions. What exactly is Jordan's goal?
Strangely, it seems 'being the best' might not be the goal anymore. Or at least, that is what Jordan wants us to believe.
'I'm all about challenges and seeing if I can go out and see if I can achieve something,' Jordan said in the news conference.
Is that 'something' personal or team-oriented? Probably both, but nobody knows what the measuring stick for success in Jordan's latest challenge is. I'm not sure that he knows yet either. For now, Jordan claims he is simply 'scratching an itch.'
Jordan knows he cannot win a championship with Washington. He said he would be very surprised if the Wizards won 50 games.
That seems like a huge understatement.
Michael Jordan desperately wants to make the playoffs this season. Veiled behind the opportunity to nurture a young team he built as Washington's president of basketball operations, the insatiable drive of a champion lurks.
Thursday night Jordan will try to prove his impressive 18-point first quarter on Saturday was no fluke. Washington's third exhibition game is in Detroit. Coincidentally, the Pistons have ditched their Wonka-colored uniforms in favor of their classic Bad Boy-era threads, the dress code for the team that gave Jordan fits early in his career. What timing.
Certainly Jordan and the Wizards will make mistakes as they both progress toward his mysterious goal. Jordan's own words have already prepared us for that.
Seeing Jordan lay in a wide-open alley-oop in his first exhibition game instead of dunking made me cringe the same way I do when I see a football player break his leg. Others certainly enjoyed seeing an aged Jordan and laughed. It's funny that one man could elicit such reactions from me or anybody else.
Yet Jordan can. That is why we watch, wonder and wait.
