• March 15, 1999

Michael Jordan

A Study in Grace and Competitive Fire, He Became His Sport's Airborne Image

The most remarkable thing about Michael Jordan may not be that he was so widely celebrated as the Greatest Basketball Player Ever and the Most Recognizable Human Being on Earth, but that he very nearly lived up to the hype. Certainly he was the transcendent athlete of his generation, the mythic figure against whom all others will henceforth be measured. Yet though Jordan, 36, was in some respects the most public of superstars—unlike Streisand, all his essential work was in person, before a large, noisy audience—no one succeeded better than he in keeping the world at a distance, revealing as little of himself as he chose. And at a time of rampant cynicism about the link between big sports and big money, so universal was the recognition of Jordan's rare gifts that he was able to make far more than any other athlete—$34 million in the final year of his contract with the Chicago Bulls alone—without being tarred with a reputation for greed. Even more paradoxical, he was a man of legendary competitive pride who chose, a the very height of his fame, to risk the most public of failures—leaving basketball temporarily after the death of father to try his hand at professional baseball. His return to basketball, of course, was triumphal. Did that expose limits—that he could play one game and one game alone? "We could say the same about Da Vinci or Dalí," says Jordan's former NBA rival Isiah Thomas. " 'Shoot, he's only painting a picture,' or Robert Frost—'It's only words.' When you see that kind of purity and perfection, it transcends everything."