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Taking the air out Michael Jordan's comeback has, surprisingly, fallen flat
Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Phil's take, give us yours. Quick, how is Michael Jordan's comeback going? You had to stop and think for a second, didn't you? Jordan's return had slipped your mind. You probably had no idea, for instance, that he scored 19 points Sunday night in a blowout loss to the Detroit Pistons. Maybe that's understandable in light of all the World Series drama that has been going on, but it's not just that other events have captured your attention. It's that Jordan is back and you really don't care. At least not the way you used to care. It used to be that when you checked the NBA schedule, you looked for two things: your team's next game and Jordan's next game. If you were anywhere near a television when he was playing, you found him. But now, after only a handful of games, you've figured out that Jordan isn't must-see TV anymore. That's why he's not just getting beaten by the Pistons, he's getting beaten in the ratings, soundly whipped in two matchups against the Series. This is the one thing that no one could have expected, that his return would be met with such indifference. His first game back, in New York against the Knicks, brought out the celebrities, but did you check out the atmosphere in the Garden by the third quarter? Not exactly electric. You'd have thought it was a February game against the Cavaliers. The public isn't dumb. Fans can see that Jordan isn't what he once was, that he'll have a few games, or maybe parts of games, in which he takes our breath away the way he once did. But far more often he'll look like just another good player in the league. For that, he gets a space in the back of our mind, to be checked on only every so often. There's very little buzz about Jordan anymore because things have changed. He came back to a public that was more somber after the tragedies of Sept. 11. We all feel a little silly now getting overly excited about an alley-oop. Part of it, too, is that Jordan's games feel more like experiments than competitions these days. Try as he might to turn his efforts of making the Washington Wizards playoff-worthy into some sort of noble quest, no one's buying it. The only reason to watch is to see if he can still float under the basket and hit the reverse the way he used to, and even that, it seems, is not enough. It turns out that Jordan needed the Bulls more than we thought. Our fascination with him didn't come just from his acrobatics, but from his team's success. Without those championship rings, Jordan would have just been Dominique Wilkins. Now, with these woeful Wizards, that's about the best he can be. Even the awe he used to inspire in his opponents is gone, probably for good. "We've got bigger things to think about than Michael Jordan," the Pistons' Jerry Stackhouse told the Detroit News after beating the Wizards the other night. "He's just one player on a team we should beat." Maybe we'll all get more enthusiastic about Jordan as the season progresses and he gets his legs back, sharpens his game. But somehow that doesn't seem likely. There's no telling how much better Jordan will get, but he'll never capture us the way he once did. Times have changed. Even in the world of sports, we've got bigger things to think about than Michael Jordan. Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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