Jordan leaves Bulls struggling

The incandescent images of his greatest moments on court began playing and replaying on television as soon as word started filtering out that basketball’s greatest star ever would announce his retirement today.

The world relived a thousand times all those shining memories: The goodbye flourish following the final steal and championship-winning shot of his career, the soaring slam dunks, the unblockable jump shots, the tongue-wagging, the famous shrug that said tonight he just could not miss.

Few players seeking to learn from his example can have anything close to his pure athleticism, but that is not what made him transcendentally great.

Not a natural jump shooter, it wasn’t until he went beyond his high-flying dunking style and learned to create shots for himself and his teammates that his Chicago Bulls started winning NBA titles — six in two three-ring clusters this decade, interrupted only by a dabble in baseball.

Electrifying young players like Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant seem only to have learned to copy his flash so far, not his basketball intelligence, not his dedication to physical fitness, not his steely will to win.

The most lucrative attraction in NBA history, Jordan leaves his league struggling to win back fans after a labour war. The only silver lining may be that while all the world was a Michael Jordan fan, now hardcore fans in every city can feel their teams finally have a chance to win a championship.

Other players have said they wanted him to come back but they may privately feel as Denver Nuggets guard Nick Van Exel describes them: “They would love to see him on the court but they wouldn’t want to see him win another championship.”

Jordan also leaves the Bulls, the only NBA team he ever played for, in shambles.

Luc Longley probably also spoke for former teammates and fellow free agents Scottie Pippen and Dennis Longley, among others, when he said Jordan’s retirement would probably have a negative effect on the chances of his returning to the Bulls.

Chicago had only four signed players with just 2-1/2 weeks left to field a team.

Outside his sport, Jordan was also the ultimate winner, becoming a global icon — a phenomenon which he claimed to find baffling.

So handsome, he made baldness cool, he was once reckoned by Fortune magazine to have generated $10 billion in the world economy. He amassed a personal fortune estimated at half a billion dollars by becoming the ultimate pitchman for the world’s most image-conscious corporations.

Conservative in his lifestyle, he was said to have transcended race and politics. He rarely was tainted by bad publicity and he never espoused a controversial cause, though NFL great Jim Brown said he hopes Jordan will use his fame in retirement to work for social change.

Jordan deflected to Nike, corporate parent of “Air Jordans,” accusations that child sweatshops made his line of sneakers, and he resented questions about his gambling.

Jordan always argued that gambling was legal. What, he asked, was the big deal if a tiny percentage of his enormous wealth went to pay off unsavory types for losses on the golf course?

His father, James, said Jordan did not have a gambling problem, he had a competitiveness problem. Competitiveness may still be the 10-time scoring champion’s most telling trait.

He was known to humiliate teammates in practice and he was accused of forming friendships with opponents in order to gain a competitive edge.

Although supremely intelligent on the basketball court, before the media and perhaps in the corporate boardroom, Jordan publicly revealed few signs of introspection until his return in the spring of 1995 from his one season-plus experiment in baseball.

Then he began to discuss how as the years had passed his character had deepened, especially after the murder of his father, with whom he was very close, and after his humbling failure in minor league baseball, where he grew to admire his no-hope teammates who played simply for love of the game.

As his prodigious talents took him to unforeseen access to the hidden levers of fame and corridors of power, he always remained himself, no Elvis in decline, always confident and always resourceful. He went out on top, as he always said he wanted to, with a perfect storybook ending.