Remembering the time when Michael Jordan flew
By Mark Carman
Thinking back to a time long ago when Chicago was excited about hosting the NBA’s All-Star game
February 6, 1988. I was 14-years old, a freshman at Highland Park High School. Growing up in this privileged Chicago suburb, I was born into a family that could afford and had Chicago Bulls season tickets. My father bought “Sweet 16” tickets in Michael Jordan’s third year in the league. The Bulls gave the Sweet 16 crew a choice going into the 1987-88 season: Purchase season tickets or bow out.
We bought the tickets and took quite a ride.
The weekend of the All-Star game our tickets were bumped to the last row of the second balcony in historic (and subjectively glamorous) Chicago Stadium. The reason being, the Bulls wanted to accommodate the NBA big wigs coming to town. Looking down at my seats in Section C, Aisle 3, Row H, Seats 18-19 was a gentleman in a Boston Celtics Starter jacket.
Ew.
As unbelievable as it seems in retrospect, this was an era in Chicago basketball where fans came out to see the opposing players. The only time the stadium would fill up — even with MJ on the roster — was when Bird, Magic or Dr. J would come to town. Go back and Youtube Jordan rookie year highlights- plenty of seats available most nights. That had come to an end by the early part of Jordan’s third year in the league, but some of the Bird, Magic, Dr. J fans were stilling lingering.
Larry Bird then won the 3-point contest, hitting his last three attempts to sneak by Detlef Schrempf. The crowd, including my father who was normally reading the paper and other law journals, went crazy for Bird giving him a standing ovation. I was distraught. Bird was the enemy, considered almost universally at the time as better than Jordan. How could you, Dad?
Then, it happened. His Airness took center stage and literally defied both the odds and gravity to create one of the most iconic moments in basketball lore. When MJ stepped on the free throw line and launched himself into orbit, he took with him an entire city. As he soared through the air, I felt myself flying with him. All of the NBA elites, weather vane onlookers, and icons of the game around me all faded into the background; I may have been up in the nosebleeds but what was happening was as crystal clear — greatness was announcing itself.
He became singular, arriving on another plane of existence. Like Prince, Bowie, Picasso…
Jordan.
The next day, Jordan put up 40-points in the All-Star Game, winning the MVP. Isiah Thomas was throwing alley-oops to him, a hated competitor who Zeke and others froze out in Jordan’s rookie year. After taking off from the free throw line in the dunk contest, Jordan never returned to Earth; he had become a permanent fixture in the basketball mixture.
And so had we. Being a Bulls fan, and being from Chicago, meant something different after that afternoon. Everything that came after has been well documented and immortalized, but I look back on that weekend with the fondest of memories. That’s where it all started, when everything was new and pure — and authentically ours.
Chicago has always been a great basketball city. Derrick Rose, Anthony Davis, Isiah Thomas, Mark Aguirre, Tim Hardaway, Terry Cummings, Dwyane Wade, Michael Finley, Maurice Cheeks, Ray Meyer, the Chicago-led “Flyin’ Illini — the list is endless.
There’s an intense pride in being from Chicago, something that we’ve once again forgotten with the Bulls being as bad as they are. But with the All-Star Game returning to the West Side this weekend, let’s remember how good things were and how special it was.