Hang In There

Dear Michael,

Last week you sounded more definite than you ever have about your intention to retire after this season. "This is it," you told reporters in Salt Lake City. "I'm done." But when it comes to your career moves, we can't resist offering unsolicited advice, so please indulge us one more time. In the words of a company you're somewhat familiar with: Just Don't Do It.

Don't retire yet. Not when your status as the league's top player remains undisputed. Not when you're still the best show in sports. You turn 35 on Feb. 17, yet everyone else in the league—especially the whippersnappers barely more than half your age—are humbled by your performance night in and night out, including the 23-point, MVP-winning extravaganza you put on Sunday at the All-Star Game in Madison Square Garden. But you shouldn't continue playing just because you realize that whenever you do leave, the public's interest in the NBA will decline, NBC's and Turner Sports' ratings will drop, stock in Nike and McDonald's and all the other corporations you're affiliated with will plummet, the country will spiral downward into an economic recession and an emotional malaise, and, in all likelihood, the republic will crumble.

Don't worry about any of that, Michael, because this isn't about us, it's about you. Most athletes retire for one of two reasons: They no longer measure up to their accepted level of performance, or their competitive fire has diminished. In your case neither is true. You are having one of the greatest NBA seasons a player your age has ever had, leading the league in scoring with a 28.9 average at the All-Star break (chart). Furthermore, as Philadelphia 76ers guard Allen Iverson or New York Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy or anyone else who has paid the price for arousing your ire in the last few years can attest, your passion on the court hasn't waned.

You don't want to retire, and you don't have to retire. You're willing to retire. Five years ago, when you abruptly left the Bulls after they had won their third straight championship, you seemed burned out—tired of the intense media scrutiny of your private life and the relentless grind of the regular season. Strangely, you appeared much more ready for retirement at 30 than you do now. After what turned out to be a 17-month sabbatical, when you chased your dream of playing major league baseball, you came back to the Bulls in March 1995 reenergized, and even now a regular-season game in Sacramento seems to excite you as much as the first game of the Finals. In fact you are the only Chicago player who hasn't missed a game since that day you returned to the club. That doesn't fit the profile of someone ready for the rocking chair.

But you're willing to leave now because the Bulls as you have known them are about to be dismantled, and you see no point in continuing to play. You are right to be troubled by the lack of regard Chicago vice president of basketball operations Jerry Krause and team chairman Jerry Reinsdorf have shown for the two people most responsible for helping you bring five championships to Chicago in the last seven years: Phil Jackson and Scottie Pippen. Because Krause has shut the door on any possibility of Jackson's returning to the Bulls next season and you don't want to play for any other coach at this stage of your career, you view retirement as the only option.

Don't let the two Jerrys drive you out of the game prematurely. They don't realize that as caretakers of a dynasty, it is their obligation to sustain it as long as possible, not to hasten its destruction. It's as if they've been entrusted with the Mona Lisa and have decided to leave it on the front porch. Mitch and Reggie and Kobe should be the ones to let you know when you should retire, not the Jerrys. Let events on the court tell you when it's time to leave, not decisions from the boardroom.

Your loyalty to Jackson is admirable, but he would understand if you chose to keep playing after he left. "Michael's position on this is very gratifying personally," Jackson has said, "but it's certainly not a position I ever asked him to take." If you turned up the pressure on the two Jerrys by saying publicly that you would stay if, hypothetically. current Hulls assistant Jimmy Rodgers became coach (thus ensuring that Jackson's system would endure), Krause and Reinsdorf would no doubt give in to your wishes rather than face a public lynching beside your statue outside the United Center.

Our point here is, you will be able to perform at the current level only for a short time longer—a year, maybe two—and that time is too precious to throw away. It's sad enough when a great player's career ends too soon because of injury, as was the case with Larry Bird, or illness, as was Magic Johnson's situation. To let your career end because of organizational politics would be a horrible waste.

Wanting to leave too soon rather than too late is the right instinct, but now is not the time to worry about that. Even though a startling number of great NBA players, especially guards, suffered a rapid decline in performance after age 35 (chart)—if their careers even lasted that long—you appear to be an exception to that rule. You are a young 35, maybe partly because your sabbatical has left you with less mileage on your odometer than other players have run up at your age. True, the years have taken away some of the spring in your legs, and you like to play the role of the old man every once in a while (for instance, the time after watching the Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant dunk in a game earlier this year when you turned to Pippen and asked, "Did we jump that high when we were 19?"). But one of the measures of your greatness is the way you have compensated for a slight but unmistakable loss of athleticism.