20 years ago, Michael Jordan returned to the basketball court
20 years ago today, Michael Jordan sent out a press release containing two words: “I’m back.”
And with that, his sojourn into baseball was at an end, and the greatest player ever to play the game of basketball began to do just that once again.
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It was March 18, 1995, and Jordan returned to the Bulls wearing number 45 instead of his customary 23. His first game came against Reggie Miller’s Indiana Pacers, and he scored 19 points.
The first of Michael Jordan’s three retirements from basketball remains one of the stranger events in sports history. Jordan was coming off three consecutive championships. He was the undisputed best player in basketball, with a chance to become the greatest ever. And he left all that… to play baseball?
It should be mentioned that there are those who still believe that Jordan’s retirement was a cover for a gambling suspension from David Stern and the league. While the story makes some sense (these kinds of stories always do, on some level), we really don’t know what happened, and probably never will, at least not entirely.
Think of it this way: if LeBron left the NBA today to join the Cleveland Browns, how crazy would that be? Prime of his career, chance to be the greatest ever, and he leaves to play a completely different sport?
Jordan wasn’t good in the minor leagues. Maybe he could have been, but it had been too long since he had played. His life was baskteball; you can’t just pick up a baseball bat after more than a decade and expect to be any better than Will Ferrell was in his recent tour of the major leagues. It’s the same reason that all that LeBron-in-the-NFL talk is nothing more than a crazy hypothetical. Yes, he could have been a really good football player if he had trained his whole life for it, the way the vast majority of NFL players have. But his life has been basketball for 15 years; he couldn’t possibly make that transition right now.
Anyway, a rusty Jordan and the Bulls were eliminated from the playoffs that year, but they stormed back the next year to have the most dominant season in NBA history, an unstoppable juggernaut at 72-10 (with Jordan back in his familiar number 23). Two more championships followed (cue still-bitter Jazz fans sadly shaking their heads; that should have been their moment of glory), as well as that stint with the Wizards that we should all agree to just forget happened. But let’s not minimize the greatest thing to come out of this comeback: Space Jam.
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