Exactly one week ago today I woke up with excitement. In fact if you are a fan of basketball you were excited too.
Last Monday night, the greatest basketball player in the history of the sport, Michael Jordan, declared to three reporters from the Associated Press, Chicago Sun-Times and CNNSI.com that the public should expect a news conference regarding his potential comeback to the National Basketball Association.
He did not say at the time if he would definitely make a comeback, but iterated that, “I’m doing it for the love of the game. Nothing else. For the love of the game.”
Since his retirement from the Chicago Bulls in 1999, Jordan has always said that he is “99% percent sure” that he would not make a second comeback to the sport that he dominated for so many years. However, this summer, people who spend time with the six-time world champion have hinted to the media that his work ethic has increased in order to get into “game” shape.
The 38-year old Jordan currently is the President and partial owner of the NBA franchise, Washington Wizards. If he were to make a return to the court he would follow in the footsteps of his hockey counterpart Mario Lemieux and play for the team that he runs.
When the day started on Tuesday September 11, Jordan’s news conference and potential comeback was the biggest news to come out of our nation’s capital.
However, at around 9:00 AM EST on that Tuesday morning, like many people around the nation, my excitement suddenly turned into dismay.
The images of two 110-story buildings fallen to the ground, our military headquarters destroyed and thousands of people hurt or killed made all of the hoopla over one man’s decision to return to a sport seem trivial.
Rather than discussing the greatest basketball player competing for their home team at work or school, D.C residents and the rest of America were glued to their television sets watching the day’s events unfold. Oh and if they weren’t watching it on TV, they were living it out -all Washington landmarks were evacuated.
In the time he has been in the public eye, Michael Jordan has been labeled at times as a Superman-like hero and sometimes even compared to God. All this praise is just for his unreal basketball playing skills.
However, he is a human like the rest of us and like all of the people around the country, what he viewed on Tuesday seemed to be the most unreal thing he had ever seen.
Realizing that his news conference meant close to nothing – now that war had been declared on the nation and millions of people had been horrified – Jordan postponed any sort of announcement of his return.
With training camp starting only three weeks from now, nobody is sure what “his airness” will do or say next.
He told the Chicago Sun-Times on Saturday that he might not announce anything till October. He also said that the announcement would come in fax form.
“All this talk about me, with everything else going on?” he told Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander in disgust. “With all this, what does what I do matter?”
It’s a great question Michael and you should be asking it. The fact is though, America is in need of some normalcy and your face in the news can help breed some normalcy to the people around the nation.
It will take months to get back to everyday life for most Americans. For the people were directly affected by the tragedy (who lost loved ones or their workplaces), they may never feel the same way that they did before the incident.
It has only been one week.
For myself, being a native New Yorker it was extremely tough coping with that horrific day. All thoughts of hearing Jordan saying, “I’m back” for a second time were dismissed from my mind.
Now I wish I could ask the question: how good he will play at the age of 38? Now, times have changed and I have to ask myself if America will go to war or not?
How quickly a mindset can change?
Exactly one week ago tonight, I went to bed horrified. In fact if you are a human, you were horrified too.