Sports Illustrated
Jack McMullan

Think what a player would have to do to be regarded as Jordan's equal. He would have to construct dramatic bookends on his basketball life by sinking championship-winning shots at the beginning of his college career (as North Carolina's Jordan did as a freshman in 1982) and at the end of his pro career (as the Chicago Bulls' Jordan did to beat the Utah Jazz in Game 6 of the NBA Finals last spring). He would have to leave the game, only to make a triumphant return a year-and-a-half later, as Jordan did when he became baseball's most famous banjo hitter in '94 and basketball's best player once again in '95. He would have to win a championship trifecta with one style of play (take-it-to-the-hoop acrobatics) and then three more titles with a different style (controlled fadeaway jump shooting) -- the basketball equivalent of writing a comedy as good as Twelfth Night and a tragedy as good as Hamlet. He would have to possess the crossover appeal to sell sneakers to youngsters in the ghetto and cologne to oldsters in the boardroom. He would have to put his imprint not only on the game but also on the culture, as Jordan did with his shaved pate and his close, personal relationships with figures as diverse as Spike Lee and Bugs Bunny. He would have to become a worldwide icon, more well-known in places than even the game he played. And he would have to accomplish all that, as veteran NBA writer Terry Pluto of the Akron Beacon Journal observed last week, without acting like a jerk.