It’s been more than 11 years ago since Michael Jordan retired a second time from active play in the NBA after leading to Chicago Bulls to a dynastic reign in the world’s biggest and most popular cage league.
And 11 years since his memorable game-winning and championship-clinching jump shot over a slipping Bryon Russell, who had the unenviable task of shadowing him in the Bulls-Utah Jazz championship series, Jordan hit the sports headlines once again.
No, it has nothing to do with his plan to return with the Bulls or with the Washington Wizards, but after making it to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, held in the birth place of the sport in Springfield, Mass.
Since being an NBA follower during the 1980s when Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy were running the “Showtime” with the LA Lakers, I’ve always wondered why sports scribes, towards the middle of the 1990s, would label Jordan as the Greatest basketball player ever to play the game.
I don’t really know.
But Art Thiel, who wrote an article that appeared in the Official NBA encyclopedia, mentioned that “Michael Jordan became the universal measuring device for appraising greatness.”
I really wondered what was the basis of the sports scribes, who for decades had been covering the NBA and had more or less seen the countless exploits of legendary basketball figures, before finally seeing Jordan and getting mesmerized by him.
Is it Jordan’s scoring year in year out that began in 1985? Or his passionate game face that triggered the Bulls championship stampede in 1991 to 1993, beating Western Conference’s best teams—the Lakers, the Portland Trailblazers and the Phoenix Suns in that order? Then the 1996-1998 seasons, which saw Jordan leading the Bulls anew to the NBA’s Mount Olympus? Beating squads like the Seattle Supersonics in 1996 and the Jazz in 1997 and 1998?
If it’s scoring, then I think recent Manila visitor and NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has the inside track to the “greatest ever” tag because he owns the all-time NBA scoring title of 38,387 points scored spanning 20 seasons, plus he’s in the third all-time rebounding leaders, just behind the late Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell.
Or maybe his intensity each game that earned the nod of people that eventually made the “greatest-ever” tag sink.
Well, the possibilities are endless when we talk of Jordan and his exploits.
But what about you? What do you think made Jordan the “greatest-ever” pro basketball player of all-time?
Photo Source: http://jefferykrit.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/michael_jordan.jpg