happy birthday michael jordan

sports:  On February 17th Michael Jordan turned fifty years old.  Normally the birthdays of even the most famous athletes is not cause for much more than brief a mention.  But as I have found out over the past week or so on various television outlets and in magazines and online, this seems to be a special occasion.   Just about every major media outlet was doing retrospectives on Jordan.  Reminding us that he is the greatest basketball player ever.  They talked about his stats, of which are always just staggering to look at.  It is amazing how many lists of NBA accomplishments around between just Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain, or belong to Jordan and no one else.  The MVP's, the championships, the scoring titles, even mentioning his streak of ten straight triple doubles during a rather remarkable run by Lebron James recently.  We also got to see tons of highlight packages.  The dunks and buzzer beaters and fade away jumpers and always that shrug in the 1992 Finals.  And every time they ended on that game winning shot that put an exclamation point on the best career in basketball history in the 1998 Finals.  Or as Jordan himself said, it was like a perfect bookend.  In 1982 his career began at North Carolina with a buzzer beater that put him on the map in the NCAA championship game and it ended that way with the Bulls all those years later.
But beyond the stats and beyond the rings is the impact that Jordan had on young boys around the city of Chicago.  People like me, who grew up watching him were given a unique experience.  I was nine and living in the southwest suburbs of Chicago when the Bulls won their first championship.  Before that I was really only aware of Michael Jordan as this guy who was the biggest star in the city I was from and the dude with the funny Mars Blackman advertisements.  I was a baseball fan.
All of a sudden I became aware that the Bulls were going to win the NBA championship in 1991.  And that was when everything changed.  At some point in that year (I can't remember exactly when) people started saying not that we could win the championship but that we would.  I started to pay attention just to see the excitement   After the Bulls swept the Pistons in the Conference Finals in a moment that ruined my view of all of those players forever (we'll maybe get to Rodman's redemption later) and Jordan switched hands in mid-air, at which point I thought I saw a man fly for the first time ever, I was sold.  I was a fan.
The Bulls did win the championship and over that summer I immersed myself in the Bulls.  I just lost my mind.  I read and watched everything I could.  And when the next season got ready to start I just assumed we would win the championship   We did.  (Yes I am saying "we" like I was a part of the effort.)  Another summer went by filled with driveway pickup games and little league.  The 92-93 began and I just figured that meant another title in Chicago, and sure as the change of seasons, it came.
The next two seasons were a little different.  Jordan retired for the first time and I was left to watch my team lose.  In 93-94 the Bulls had a very successful season considering losing Jordan the previous off season, making it back to the Conference Finals.  I sweated nearly another full season of basketball with a team that was not quite good enough to go all the way, a concept I was still adjusting to.  Then on March 18th 1995 order was restored.  A fax was shown on every news station in the city and, for all I knew, the country.  It said, "I'm Back."
I spent the next couple months watching Michael Jordan play himself back into shape in a way only he could, more buzzer beaters and fifty plus point performances in Madison Square Garden.  But then that off season there was a new talk around town.  People were talking not just about a championship but also about this being "the best team ever."  The Bulls were going to break the Lakers record of 69-13.  As with everything else, I just figured that it was going to happen.  We still had Phil Jackson and Scottie Pippen.  We got Dennis Rodman, the best rebounder off all times (when you consider his size it almost impossible to argue.) and Michael Jordan was back for the whole year.  He had never let me down and I knew he wouldn't now.  My blind trust was reward with a 72-10 season and another championship (just a quick side note:  I would put 72-10 right up their with Dimaggio's 56 game hitting streak and Cy Young's 611 wins as an unbreakable record.  That win-loss record is simply preposterous).
Two more championships followed as I continued to assume the best.  Then in one fell swoop it was all gone.  Jordan, Pippen, Jackson, and Rodman were all gone.  The Bulls were a bad team, years away from success and in full on rebuilding mode.  As I started following the rest of the league I became confused.  Surely there was some newfangled brand of basketball being played or the quality of players was going down.  What kind of lame league was I watching where scoring leaders couldn't even average 30 points a game.  Why was there a different guy leading the league in scoring every year?  Couldn't somebody just take over the league?  Eventually I realized that the answer to those questions was that Michael Jordan was gone.
But I also realized I was a fan of the league and the game.  I continued to love the Bulls.  But in their losing times I found other players and teams to enjoy as well: Chis Webber's Kings, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Kobe, and Tim Duncan among others.
There is now hope in Chicago with the arrival of Derrick Rose.  He has Bulls fans believing that championships are possible again.  But hope is different than certainty.  And that is what we had in the '90s with Jordan.  Certainty.  And that is the thing I have come to reflect on the most.  There is now a generation gap.  I now sometimes work with people who are too young to remember what those championship years were like.  I have also moved away from Chicago.  And when people ask me why I love basketball so much that is what I tell them.  I ask them to imagine waking up every morning knowing that a team and player you rooted for were always going to deliver.  Want to win championships?  Done.  Want to have the best record for a single season ever?  Done.  Want to always watch the greatest player be the greatest player ever night no matter what else was going on?  Done.  There was no doubt.  I don't think I even considered having doubt.  Michael Jordan would never let us lose.  It was impossible.
Since then I have been in search of that feeling only to continually feel let down.  Tiger Woods has let me down.  Tom Brady has let me down.  In the same way that I didn't understand why basketball players couldn't do what Jordan did after he left the game, I started to wonder why none of these other "best evers" lost.  If they were really the best ever, like Michael Jordan was, they wouldn't ever lose.  But then again those greats, even in other sports, Weren't Michael Jordan.
I would like to think I wasn't spoiled too much as a child.  But in this specific case I was.  I was spoiled by winning.  I was spoiled by getting to see the greatest ever at what he did 100 days a year.  And I was spoiled by getting to see it at such a young age.  Normally I would say that being spoiled is a bad thing.  But in this case I don't.  So thank you Michael Jordan.  Thank you for letting me watch you be the best ever. Thank you for letting me see your teams be the best ever.  Thank you for showing me the highest form of what it is to win and to deliver at all costs every day.  And right now, happy birthday.