Last week you sounded more definite than you ever have about your intention to retire after this season. "This is it," you told reporters in Salt Lake City. "I'm done." But when it comes to your career moves, we can't resist offering unsolicited advice, so please indulge us one more time. In the words of a company you're somewhat familiar with: Just Don't Do It.
Don't retire yet. Not when your status as the leagues top player remains undisputed. Not when you're still the best show in sports. You turn 35 on Feb. 17, yet everyone else in the league - especially the whippersnappers barely more than half your age - are humbled by your performance night in and night out, including the 23-point, MVP-winning extravaganza you put on Sunday at the All-StarGame in Madison Square Garden. But you shouldn't continue playing just because you realize that whenever you do leave, the publics interest in the NBA will decline NBC's and Turner Sports' ratings will drop, stock in Nike and McDonald's and all other corporations you're affiliated with will plummet, the country will spiral downward into an economic recession and an emotional malaise, and, in all likelihood, the republic will crumble.
Don't worry about any of that, Michael, because this isn't about us, it's about you. Most athletes retire for one of two reasons: They no longer measure up to their accepted level of performance, or their competitive fire has diminished. In your case neither is true. You are having one of the greatest NBA seasons a player your age has ever had, leading the league in scoring with a 28.9 average at the All-Star break. Furthermore, as Philadelphia 76ers guard Allen Iverson or New York Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy or anyone else who has paid the price for arousing your ire in the last few years can attest, your passion on the court hasn't waned.
You don't want to retire, and you don't have to retire. You're willing to retire. Five years ago, when you abruptly left the Bulls after they had won their third straight championship, you seemed burned out - tired of the intense media scrutiny of your private life and the relentless grind of the regular season. Strangely, you appeared much more ready for retirement at 30 than you do now. After what turned out to be a 17-month sabbatical, when you chased your dream of playing major league baseball, you came back to the Bulls in March 1995 reenergized, and even now a regular-season game in Sacramento seems to excite you as much as the first game of the Finals. In fact you are the only Chicago player who hasn't missed a games since that day you returned to the club. That doesn't fit the profile of someone ready for the rocking chair.
But you're willing to leave now because the Bulls as you have known them are about to be dismantled, and you see no point in continuing to play. You are right to be troubled by the lack of regard Chicago vice president of basketball operations Jerry Krause and team chairman Jerry Reinsdorf have shown to the two people most responsible for helping you bring five championships to Chicago in the last seven years: Phil Jackson and Scottie Pippen. Because Krause has shut the door on any possibility of Jackson's returning to the Bulls next season and you don't want to play for any other coach at this stage of your career, you view retirement as the only option.
Don't let the two Jerrys drive you out of the game prematurely. They don't realize that as caretakers of a dynasty, it is their obligation to sustain it as long as possible, not to hasten its destruction. It's as if they've been entrusted with the Mona Lisa and have decided to leave it on the front porch. Mitch and Reggie and Kobe should be the ones to let you know when you should retire, not the Jerrys. Let events on the court tell you when its time to leave, not decisions from the boardroom.
Your loyalty to Jackson is admirable, but he would understand if you chose to keep playing after he left. "Michael's position on this is very gratifying personally," Jackson has said, "but it's certainly not a position I ever asked him to take." If you turned up the pressure on the two Jerrys by saying publicly that you would stay if, hypothetically, current Bulls assistant Jimmy Rodgers became coach (thus ensuring that Jackson's system would endure), Krause and Reinsdorf would no doubt give in to your wishes rather than face a public lynching beside your statue outside the United Center.
Our point here is, you will be able to perform at the current level only for a short time longer - a year, maybe two - and that time is to precious to throw away. It's sad when a great player's career ends too soon because of injury, as was the case with Larry Bird, or illness, as was Magic Johnson's situation. To let your career end because of organizational politics would be a horrible waste.
Wanting to leave too early rather than too late is the right instinct, but now is not the time to worry about that. Even though a startling number of great NBA players, especially guards, suffered a rapid decline in performance after age 35 - if their careers even lasted that long - you appear to be an exception to the rule. You are a young 35, maybe partly because your sabbatical has left you with less mileage on your odometer than other players have run up at your age. True, the years have taken away some of the spring in your legs, and you like to play the role of old man every once in a while (for instance, the time after watching Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant dunk in a game earlier this year when you turned to Pippen and asked, "Did we jump that high when we were 19?"). But one of the measures of your greatness is the way you have compensated for a slight but unmistakable loss of athleticism.
"One thing Michael and I had in common is that there was a time when we would rely on our physical ability, on jumping over everybody," says former 76ers star Julius Erving, who was 37 when he retired in 1987. "But as time has passed, he's done a remarkable job of adapting his game. He's developed that fadeaway jumper, which is almost unstoppable, and he's become so good at all of the little things. Watch how tightly he comes off a pick, or how he sets people up on the dribble. You think of him as a high-flying guy, but what has kept him great is that he does the fundamental things so well."
You can't be an acrobat for 48 minutes a game anymore, Michael, so you've learned to pick your spots. You can still take off on some spectacular flights to the hoop, but more often you use the threat of the drive, which defenders still have to respect, in order to pull up and shoot the jumper. So why not see how many other ways you can adapt your game and still stay on top? That might be an intriguing challenge, if winning championships is no longer sufficient incentive.
The NBA needs you to play for as long as possible, not just because of what you mean to ratings and attendance but also because the young stars poised to take over the league still cannot touch your greatness. Your performance brings out a humility in most of them that a thousand admonishments from other players of your generation, such as Charles Barkley and Karl Malone, never could. When Tracy McGrady, the 18-year-old Toronto Raptors rookie who jumped from high school to the pros last year, was asked recently to read some of the items for a David Letterman Top 10 list of NBA players' pet peeves, there was one he balked at: "Guarding Michael Jordan always leaves you smelling like his damn cologne." McGrady didn't want you to hear him say those words, not even in jest. As long as you command that kind of respect, even fear, from your peers, Michael, you should keep playing.
Besides, what else are you going to do? Where else will you satisfy your craving for competition? And don't say "golf." As your friend Bird warns, "There's only so much golf you can play." He lasted five years in retirement before returning to the NBA to coach the Indiana Pacers this season. You love the links more than he does, so perhaps you would be satisfied longer, but not forever. You're also not the type to sit in an NBC studio for hours, waiting for your 15 seconds to say something intelligent while a producer talks in your ear. "I will find other outlets," you say. "That is one thing I'm not afraid of. I welcome the challenge of trying to find other challenges." Whatever those challenges turn out to be, they're not going anywhere. They will still be there a year or two from no, or whenever you finish playing.
As you know, there are many players around the league that aren't convinced that this is your last season, no matter how often you insist it. "I don't have any inside information, even though we have the same agent [David Falk]," says Atlanta Hawks center Dikembe Mutombo, "but I believe he's coming back. He loves the game too much, and he would miss it too much. I would bet anyone that he will be back next year." An awful lot of players won't believe you're really going to retire until they see you sitting courtside in a suit.
We remember the ceremony at the United Center in November 1994 in which your number was retired. Afterward you tried to put to rest the suspicions that you would come out of retirement. "See that?" you aid, pointing at your uniform up in the rafters. "Doesn't that convince you? That should be proof that I'm not coming back." Four months later you were back, wearing a Bulls uniform.
We know you weren't exactly thrilled with the last piece of career advice we offered you, back in March 1994, when you were trying to make it with the Chicago White Sox. As you recall - all too well - we put a picture of you, swinging and missing, on the cover with the headline BAG IT, MICHAEL! We suggested that baseball needed you as much as it needed another Rotisserie League. Maybe it wasn't the most tactful way to get the message across, but you have to admit that things have worked out pretty well for you ever since stopped chasing curve balls.
So remember, circumstances change - and your mind can change, too. Ask yourself if there is any possibility that you will look back years from now and wish you had continued to play until you knew you had squeezed every last drop out of your talent. So, no matter what your future holds, Michael, just make sure it doesn't hold a moment of regret.
Sincerely,
Phil Taylor
| Member of the Internet Link Exchange | Free Home Pages at GeoCities |