Being like Mike

Middle-aged hoop fans live out fantasy ... for a price

Now that the fire is out, the last jumper free of his hands and the NBA playing days officially over, you might assume Michael Jordan is basking in a life of leisure. Wouldn't you?

It sounds like he is. And cashing in, too.

Jordan is hanging in steamy Las Vegas this week, rubbing shoulders and sharing secrets with portfolio managers, commodity brokers and a cast of well-heeled gentlemen. Word is Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban took a welcome pass this year (Scouting report: "Bigger mouth than player. Wanted the ball a lot.'') But about 90 campers -- if that's what you call a bunch of wealthy, 35-and-over hoop junkies -- plunked down $15,000 for a spot in the Michael Jordan Adult Flight School.

This is a sweet deal. An audience duly targeted with a quarter-page ad in The Wall Street Journal.

Just picture a baseball fantasy camp. But instead of throwing back cold beers with washed-up Yankees at a sleepy Florida spring training site, put yourself up in a suite at The Mirage. Limo service to and from the Vegas airport. The possibility of nightly trips to the casinos with M.J., at least according to promoters.

Rather than has-beens, we're talking the biggest big-name coaches in the game. Being drilled morning and afternoon by national title winners like Mike Krzyzewski, Lute Olson, Tom Izzo and Jim Boeheim.

Organizers of the Nike-affiliated camp won't say what staff is paid for taking time away from their campus and NBA gigs. But according to an outside income report Tubby Smith filed last year with the University of Kentucky, the Wildcats coach pocketed $15,000 from the "Michael Jordan BB Camp.''

NBA coach-turned-analyst Mike Fratello calls it "the greatest setting anyone who's a basketball person can be involved with.'' Who's to argue?

Lectures and a Q&A session with Michael. An autograph session (two signed items per camper). Michael jumping in with a team for a quarter, coaching, officiating.

John Rogers, captain and guard on the 1980 Princeton team, invested in his fourth camp, even though he tore knee cartilage nearly two months ago. Until camp ends today, the idea of arthroscopic surgery has been on hold.

The attraction of Flight School? "It reminds my wife of the days when she was a cheerleader at Princeton and I was captain of the basketball team, and she got to cheer me on,'' says Rogers, 45, chairman of Ariel Mutual Funds.

Like most campers, Rogers is a basketball lifer, although the only one whose resume includes playing for Hall of Fame coach Pete Carril. Rogers is polished enough to have been invited to play in pickup games while Jordan prepared for his last comeback, along with some Princeton buddies in the Chicago area. So being around the game's greatest player isn't a big deal.

Instead, it's the throwback to his college days and love of the intense competition he can't find at the local health club. "And I always had this enormous respect for coaches,'' he says. "So it's the opportunity to be around coaches, get to know them better.''

But if it's also about schmoozing and making business connections, Rogers' trips to the Vegas camp have been a bust. Most nights he's been too sore to leave his hotel suite.

Not so for Ross Deutsch, who's camped every summer since the 1997 inaugural -- an investment that's cost the Chicago commodity broker in excess of $100,000. A gymnast growing up, Deutsch is another wealthy hoops fanatic living out a fantasy.

"I am a 5-8, 165-pound Jewish guy from Highland Park, Ill. -- where am I going?'' Deutsch cracks. "My career is when I was 11. But this has enabled me to rekindle this passion.''

And, while he's at it, developing relationships with the likes of NBA coach Larry Brown and Duke's Krzyzewski, his first coach at the inaugural camp. "We're getting killed the first game, and he is getting on us,'' Deutsch remembers of Coach K. "After the game, he starts apologizing for swearing and getting on us. We're like, 'No, no, we want you to do that, to be like that.'''

Now, they're fast friends. Deutsch and his family trip down to Duke a few times a year. Their families vacationed together earlier this month in Napa Valley. As for Brown, Deutsch flew on 76ers team charters to games in Indianapolis and Miami.

"Where else would I have gotten those types of opportunities?'' Deutsch asks. "This is all about friendships. It is playing blackjack with Michael. It is going to cocktail receptions and sitting down with Tom Izzo, Tubby Smith and their wives -- and getting to know them. That is why we all come back.''

Who's to complain? The campers fly home today fulfilled and it's easy money for M.J. and his camp counselors.

Mike Fish is a senior writer for SI.com.