Jordan writes the perfect scenario

Under ordinary circumstances, a team winning its third consecutive National Basketball Association championship would be a cause for widespread celebration, but in Chicago (and indeed, throughout the nation) the joy has been muted in the five days since Michael Jordan's Bulls accomplished that feat.

Rather, the refrain has been a gloomy Gotterd ammerung. The Chicago team's fans find themselves lamenting with some trepidation the departure of the Phil Jackson, the coach who assembled and presided over this dynasty, the possible retirement of Jordan, and the almost-certain break-up of a team which has won six titles in the past eight years.

For the NBA the outlook is even more foreboding. Although the league has stuffed its coffers with marketing money during the Jordan era, its contract with its players expires on July 1st, and a fiscally-inspired lockout looms. This prospect has already imperiled the World Championships scheduled for Greece later this summer, and could lead to NBA players being banned from the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. But it pales in comparison to the image problem the NBA could face were it to abruptly find itself bereft of its standard-bearer.

For the better part of 10 years, Michael Jordan's has been the public face of the NBA. Beyond his undeniable greatness with a basketball in his hands, Jordan is a handsome, articulate, and witty fellow whose appeal transcends generational and racial lines.

Jordan has also been the star whose brightness has eclipsed many of the league's more unseemly moments. Earlier this season, for instance, the Golden State Warriors' Latrell Sprewell attempted to strangle his coach, P J Carlesimo. He was booted off the team and his contract was terminated, but his appeal resulted in a court reducing his suspension to one year and re-instituting his contract, beginning next season.

A Sports Illustrated expose two months ago revealed that NBA players, whose racial make-up is predominantly black and whose average salary is well over $1 million a year, also average approximately one illegitimate child apiece. (While some players have none, apparently some have as many as six or seven by as many different women.) Despite their almost obscene wealth, claimed the magazine, many players have been reluctant to acknowledge or support their out-of-wedlock children.

Add to this that not a month goes by without a sex or drugs scandal involving an NBA player, and the horrifying prospect of what NBA commissioner David Stern might confront in a post-Jordan era becomes clearer. Suffice to say, the league will do everything in its power to persuade its marquee player to remain on board.

Jordan earns over $40 million a year, and only a miniscule part of that comes from his Bulls salary. He also has enjoyed lucrative deals with Nike, with cereal companies, fast-food chains, and, of course, his film appearances. (Who could forget Roger Rabbit?) After the one-man show he put on in the Bulls' finale, Jordan's future is tied to a more complex puzzle.

Michael Jordan was a great player before Phil Jackson came along, but, by way of illustration, one can vividly recall a play-off game between the Bulls and the Celtics a dozen years ago when Jordan (this was so long ago that he even had hair) scored 63 points in the old Boston Garden. His team, however, lost the game - and lost the series to the Celtics, 3-0.

It was Jackson who convinced Jordan that by sublimating his individual gifts he could become the catalyst for a winning team, and, indeed, that is precisely what happened.

In the process he also became such a larger-than-life public figure that he lost any sense of privacy, a circumstance which after a dozen years drove him from the game. I recall with no great sense of pride that during a period of less than two years around this time I found myself on four different occasions in the midst of a media pack nipping at Jordan's heels. I was not particularly comfortable about any of them.

First there was the "gambling scandal". On a night between play-off games in New York, Jordan had hired a limousine to drive a small party, including himself and his father, to Atlantic City, where they had played blackjack until the wee hours. When the Bulls lost the following evening, the excursion was blamed in some quarters.

The following October, I was in Chicago for the American League baseball play-offs when Jordan stole the limelight by abruptly announcing his retirement from basketball, and I was in Florida the next spring to record the beginnings of Michael's ultimately unsuccessful attempt to carve out a second career as a major league baseball player.

And, just a few months later, I was slogging through the swamplands of the Lumbee Indian territory bordering North and South Carolina after the bizarre murder of Michael Jordan's father. Two teenagers (one a Lumbee, the other black) were eventually apprehended and convicted of the slaying, but not before speculation had blamed everything from the Ku Klux Klan to his son's gambling debts.

ALL of which begins to explain Jordan's relatively uneasy relationship with the members of my profession, and why, whether he decides to retire or return, we will probably be among the last to know.

Jackson, the Zen-quoting intellectual coach, has already cleaned out his office. If he doesn't wind up meditating on his Montana ranch, he will be coaching another team. Scottie Pippen, who has played Keith Richards to Jordan's Mick Jagger, who has been underpaid for many years and, in his own mind at least, under-appreciated, allowed his contract to expire and is probably headed elsewhere. Dennis Rodman, the eccentric and heavily tattooed defensive and rebounding specialist (and sometime transvestite), is definitely gone as well.

Two weeks ago one would have made it even money that Jordan's competitive instincts would have brought him back in spite of it all, but that was before he wrote such a perfect exit scenario for himself.

In the sixth and deciding game, with Pippen all but immobilised with a back ailment, Jordan took over the game single-handedly. His 45 points, over half his team's total, included the game-winning shot in the 87-86 victory, and, for the sixth time since 1991, Michael Jordan was named the Most Valuable Player of the NBA Finals.

"He's a guy that always comes through in the clutch," said Jackson. "He's a winner and he's proven it so many times over and again. How many times does he have to show us that he's a real-life hero?"