We still hold ourbreath for Air

When the Celtics played in the old Boston Garden, my family owned season tickets alongside the tunnel at midcourt, right where the teams entered and exited during every game. Our seats hugged the metal barrier that separated fans from the tunnel, so when the players and coaches sauntered by us, we could listen to their conversations and even exchange high-fives. For a young NBA fan like myself, it was an amazing perk.

I mention this only because, during the entire time we owned those seats (1977-1995), Michael Jordan dwarfed every other player who walked through that tunnel.

He was a walking EF Hutton commercial. Remember those ads, when somebody would say, “My broker is E.F. Hutton” and everyone else in the room would
freeze? That was MJ. Seeing him that close disoriented just about everybody. People unhinged. I’m not kidding. People unhinged. This was
“Beatles-in-the-mid-’60s”-caliber stuff. He melted everyone within a 50-foot radius.

Certain superstar athletes resonate with a crowd, and you can’t really describe it unless you have seen it happen, unless you were there. The sight of MJ emerging from that tunnel, the way people’s expressions instantly changed, the sounds people made … you don’t forget those things. Ever.

So when I found out Jordan was returning this season, I worried that those memories would fade for me, that they would get clouded by everything that happened with Jordan and the Wizards, the fact that he was re-inventing himself as a borderline All-Star on a dreadful basketball team. Fortunately, I caught MJ in person on Wednesday night in Boston, 10 days after I watched him in an exhibition game against the Celtics in Connecticut, and I’m telling you … he still has “it.”

It still feels like an experience.

And that’s the greatest compliment you can give him. Jordan still possesses what an old Boston columnist named George Frazier dubbed as duende —
that charisma, that Eastwood-ian swagger, that sense of self-importance that can’t even really be defined. Quite simply, MJ swallows up the room. When he
enters the building, he immediately becomes the most important person there. You can’t take your eyes off him. The most famous person on the planet. And
he knows it.

I’ll go this far: You could drag somebody off the street — let’s say, a homeless person who doesn’t follow sports and couldn’t pick MJ out of a police lineup — bring him into the arena before a Wizards-Celtics game, sit him somewhere close to the floor, have him watch the layup lines and ask him, “Which person stands out?” And he would pick Jordan. He just would. There’s something about him, an instinctive posture that says two things: “I know everyone’s looking at me right now … and they should be.”

When MJ comes to town, before the game, people have a collective hop in their step. You can sense it. You look around 15 minutes before game time and realize that 75 percent of the fans have already arrived (it sounds like the crowd before a rock concert, waiting for the lights to turn off). Every male patron exudes a glazed, giddy, “I’m important because I’m attending this important game” glow. Every female patron seems to have spent an extra 10 minutes getting ready. Little kids look like ready to self-combust. Wide-eyed teenagers stand in the first few rows, rocking back and forth, holding pens, pathetically desperate, praying against 1,000,000,000-to-1 odds that MJ will
inexplicably leave the lay-up line, vault the press table and glide into the stands to sign autographs.

And when MJ comes out, he stops the place cold. All eyes shift to him. Fans start making strange sounds. You hear squeals and cries mixed in with appreciative applause, and then a slow-developing roar emerges, almost like a chain reaction: “hhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrHHHHHHRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!”

MJ’s in the house.

When he meets the referees before the game, they laugh at his jokes and look like they might invite him over for tea on Sunday. When he turns to discuss something with a teammate, he could be talking to them in Portugese and they would still be nodding intently. When he sheds his warmup suit and walks towards the scorer’s table, every conversation in the first few rows comes to a screeching halt. When he stands on the free-throw line for the first time, readying himself to launch his first shot, thousands of camera flashes click at the same time, trying to capture the moment.

It’s all part of the MJ Experience. If he were embarrassing himself on the court, none of these things would resonate like they do, but Jordan has
displayed enough ingenuity, ability and flair to keep us interested, to keep us hoping, to keep us pining for more.

Remember, when he first announced this comeback, we were haunted by the possibility that “MJ, Part Three” would resemble Elvis Presley’s final Vegas comeback in the mid-’70s — the perversely absorbing “Fat Elvis” stage, highlighted by those ghastly sequin suits, a grotesque pot belly, a goofy bouffant hairdo, a forehead caked with sweat and an over-the-top performance that ranked a 15 out of 10 on the Unintentional Comedy Scale. We worried that this would be “Caddyshack 2,” “Another 48 Hours,” “Ali vs. Holmes,” “Eddie and the Cruisers 2,” “Rocky 5,” “Beverly Hills Cop 3” and “Godfather 3” all rolled into one.

Nope. Jordan’s skills have definitely eroded, but they haven’t left him. He still roams the floor like a predator, hunting for loose balls, lazy passes,
unattentive big men who bring rebounds down to their hips. He still has a knack for finding open teammates. He still files away the trends and tricks
of his opponents, taking advantage of these revelations at opportune times. He can still create his own shot, beat people off the dribble and find enough
space to launch his famous fallaway. Along with John Stockton, he’s still one of the two savviest players in the league.

Maybe his greatest effect has been on his teammates, the way he rejuvenated Christian Laettner and Popeye Jones, the way Chris Whitney and Rip Hamilton have improved as all-around players, the way the Wizards bench responds to every Washington run. Even his opponents have been affected; Boston’s Antoine Walker played the most cerebral, dominant game of his career on Wednesday night. Jordan brought the best out of him.