Going out on top
Jordan expected to announce retirement Wednesday
Posted: Tuesday January 12, 1999 02:11 PM
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Legendary ending: Jordan, pictured with the trophy from the Bulls' first title in 1991, will retire after bringing six NBA titles to Chicago Ken Levine/Allsport |
CHICAGO (AP) -- For six months, Michael Jordan
teased, taunted and tantalized a nation awaiting his answer.
At last, he appears to have one.
The greatest player in NBA history and the most popular athlete since
Muhammad Ali is expected to announce his retirement Wednesday at a news
conference in Chicago, a source with close ties to the NBA told The
Associated Press on Monday night.
If so, it would be the second time in five years that Jordan has walked
away from the game.
"This is a man who truly, as far as I'm concerned, is the modern day Babe
Ruth," former NBA great and current Lakers vice president Jerry West said
recently.
Just as with Jordan's first retirement, a number of factors -- his age, a
picture-perfect ending to last season, a fractured beginning for this one
-- appear to have influenced his decision. And just like last time, Jordan
could change his mind and return at some point.
But for now, he is expected to once again leave the game that bears his
indelible mark, leave it when he's at the top, the way he said he would.
Jordan did not return a message left on his phone, and Bulls owner Jerry
Reinsdorf, reached at his Arizona home, said: "I don't have any reaction. I
don't have any comments."
Asked about Jordan's retirement, Bulls spokesman Tim Hallam said, "At
this particular time, I can't comment."
Jordan's retirement also was reported by The New York Times, USA
Today and The Denver Post.
His agent, David Falk, said that until Jordan "announces whether he is
retiring or returning, anything else is speculation."
And there's been a considerable amount of that ever since Jordan hit the
final, thrilling shot in Game 6 of the NBA Finals in Utah to lock up the
Bulls' sixth championship of the decade. That speculation intensified last
week, when the NBA players and owners reached a settlement to end the
six-month lockout.
Jordan turns 36 next month. The five-time league MVP led the NBA in
scoring 10 times and averaged 31.5 points per game, best in league history.
With NBA players preparing for an abbreviated season to begin Feb. 5,
Jordan was expected to announce his plans before training camps opened
Monday. He had been in the Bahamas on vacation, but returned to Chicago
earlier this week. Another source, who also requested anonymity, told the
AP that Jordan summoned teammates Scottie Pippen
and Ron Harper
to his home to discuss the team's future.
Jordan retired from the Bulls the first time in October 1993, saying he
accomplished everything he wanted to in basketball and planned to devote
more time to his family. Instead, he spent 1994 playing minor league
baseball for the Double-A Birmingham Barons, a farm team of the Chicago
White Sox. The budding outfield prospect left baseball in the spring of
1995, rather than get caught up in another labor squabble between owners
and players, and returned to the game he loved.
While his skills were still considerable, Jordan quickly learned he could
no longer dominate the game the way he once did. The Bulls were knocked out
of the postseason in the Eastern Conference semifinals by Orlando.
Simply the best: Jordan has led the league in scoring 10 times, is a five-time MVP, and averaged 31.5 points per game for his career AP |
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But then, just as he had in every previous offseason, Jordan went back to
work. He added a nearly unstoppable fadeaway jump shot to his arsenal, and
after a rigorous weight-training and conditioning program, he came back the
next season better than ever. The Bulls then set off on another three-peat
that ended last June in Utah with Jordan stealing the ball and making the
game-clinching shot in the final seconds -- one of the most memorable
sequences of his memorable career.
It was precisely the lack of offseason work this past summer that made
many of Jordan's teammates doubt he would return.
"He prepares as well as anybody but from all I hear, he's been playing
golf and going to the Bahamas," teammate Steve Kerr said
recently. "Unless he's working out in a hidden gym somewhere down in the
Bahamas, I don't think he's really preparing to play."
Jordan had always vowed to leave the game on top, and in private moments,
he would confide that watching Willie Mays stagger under fly balls long
after his skills faded was a powerful lesson.
There were several other factors that may have weighed on his decision.
Jordan feuded with general manager Jerry Krause for years and, at the end
of the last season, when Phil Jackson said he wouldn't return, Jordan said
he wouldn't play for another coach.
During the summer, the Bulls hired former Iowa State coach Tim Floyd and
introduced him at a news conference as the team's vice president for
basketball operations. But Floyd, a longtime favorite of Krause, was widely
thought to be the coach-in-waiting, and his hiring may have further
aggravated Jordan's relationship with the team.
For whatever reason, his decision to retire leaves the NBA in the lurch.
Coming off a divisive labor fight that left fans more apathetic than angry,
Jordan was the one drawing card that could have helped the league regain
its popularity.
He refused to be labeled the league's caretaker, but when he came back
the first time, Jordan said it was partly because he wanted to teach some
of the younger players how to comport themselves -- both on the court and
off.
"If he's finished, we're the ones who are at a loss, the fans who enjoyed
him and the players who played with him and against him," Suns owner Jerry
Colangelo said.
"I do believe the game is very resilient. Having been in the league for
32 years, I've seen us at different cycles, up and down. I've seen a
concern about who is going to replace stars at that time. Thank goodness
there have been new players to take the places of the great stars of the
past."
But, Colangelo added, "Recognize that he is by himself when you talk
about great stars, but somewhere beyond the NBA today there will be some
players to come who will be great players."
Whether there will be another with Jordan's worldwide appeal, though,
remains to be seen. After Magic Johnson and Larry Bird helped lift pro
basketball's profile in the early 1980s, Jordan took it to the next level
almost single-handedly.
He also took the game itself above the rim, inspiring the generation of
players who followed him to devise more and more spectacular moves. Every
night of the NBA season yielded a bonanza of highlight-reel clips and when
they were packaged on sports programs, the league's popularity soared along
with the players.
Jordan also pulled players salaries into the stratosphere as well. He
made more than $30 million in each of the last two seasons and players like
Shaquille
O'Neal and Kevin Garnett
rode his coattails to secure $100 million deals.
Last June, Fortune magazine totaled what it called "The Jordan Effect,"
putting his impact on the economy, since joining the NBA in 1984, at $10
billion. It calculated he sold an extra $165 million in tickets for the
league, and delivered an extra $366 million in revenue, mostly in added TV
money and the sale of merchandise such as jerseys, hats and posters.
Nike, among the most prominent of the dozen or so companies who hired him
as an endorser, has sold more than $2.6 billion in Jordan-related products.
At the start of his career, the Bulls averaged only 6,365 fans per game. In
his third season, the team began a string of sellouts that reached 542
consecutive games.
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