FW: [Celtics' Stuff Re: Will McDonough on MJ's comeback

[JB <JBMetzEA@AOL.com>]

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From: asterix99@aol.com
Reply-To: Celticsstuffgroup@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2001 11:56:13 EDT
To: Celticsstuffgroup@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Celtics' Stuff Re: Will McDonough on MJ's comeback


Interesting take on Jordan, PScotman.  Here's a good column I read today on
the subject: 

Seeing Jordan Through the Looking Glass
By Sally Jenkins 

Sunday, October 7, 2001; Page D03 Are you worried about Michael Jordan's
aura of greatness? I am. I lie awake at night worrying about it. I have so
many worries and fears these days, and Jordan's aura is chief among them.
Aura, anthrax, aura, anthrax, I toss and turn.
I have heard it said repeatedly that Jordan could damage his aura with this
comeback. It was written in this very newspaper, when Jordan, 38, announced
he was ending his three-year retirement to play basketball for the Wizards,
that he is "risking his aura." As if he might chip it, or crack it. As if
it's something that hangs in his locker, or lurks over his shoulder, or is
sewn on like Peter Pan's shadow, with a needle and thread.
As if it actually existed.
Or, for that matter, was important.
I am so worried about Jordan's aura that I went on the Internet to see if I
could find him some aura-aids. And I did. There are aura-etheric pendants,
designed to increase his "life energy field." There are aura emulsifiers,
facial creams for his aura, which "harness the essence of life" so that he
will experience "more clarity, smoothness, and luminosity." There is an
auric Breath Easy Chakra Balancer, a chain of crystals that imparts "a
feeling of freedom from limitation and General Vigor." (Now, does that sound
like Michael, or does that sound like Michael?)
But during my perusals, something occurred to me. Why is it that everyone
treats Jordan's aura as if it belongs to them? As if it is community
property, and as if we are entitled to tell him how he should care for it?
Jordan is not yours or mine. He is his. He is his own property -- and that
includes his aura, along with the cap on his head, and the rest of his
personal belongings, too.
Yes, Jordan may damage his aura.
But who are we to say what he should leave intact?
The potential dismantling of the aura makes some people uncomfortable, those
people who insist they want to remember him the way he was. But this is
about what they need, not what he needs. They need the Disney ending, a neat
perfection in which Jordan will never grow old, but will continue to make
the game-winner, all air-brushed and wrapped up, with music swelling
prettily at the end.
The worry now is that Jordan's comeback will disrupt these images. That it
will be embarrassing to see him miss.
Embarrassing to whom? To him?
Jordan will miss. This time, the shot will go off the rim. That's
inevitable: He cannot make game-winners forever.
But when you dismantle something, you get to see what it's made of, and in
the case of a great like Jordan, this promises to be a worthwhile process,
not an embarrassing or uncomfortable one. Some of the aura, of course, is a
matter of half-inventions created by over-awed sportswriters and canny
advertisers, who wanted to vouchsafe certain convenient and comforting
images in him. The peeling away of the aura will reveal the core reality of
who Jordan is. 
Jordan himself clearly welcomes this prospect. He needs to play basketball,
even if it costs him a certain amount of aura and vanity -- because for him,
it's a process of self-exploration. He always has been inordinately
protective of his image, perhaps even vain, but that is exactly the point:
Jordan has every right to determine what he sees in his own mind's eye. The
one image he clearly cannot tolerate is that of himself as an idle man.
I might not like his commercials, or his cartoons, or his refusal to say
much of import on the issues of his day, but the one thing I do not quarrel
with is that these are his images, to shape as he pleases.
So I look forward to Jordan's comeback, not because I want to see another
fairy tale, but because I want to see the real Jordan. Aging, slowing, and
with the aura slowly peeling away, until the person beneath emerges, and
until the things that are truly valuable about him aren't obscured by
imagery. We will see, for instance, if he is generous or petty in defeat.
We'll see just how vain he is. It is a valuable thing to see the absolute
end of his talent. Strip away the aura and what we'll see are the real bones
of the man, things reality-based and worth examining.
One of the things his teammates are already seeing, for instance, is his
boundless capacity for work, his insistence on arriving at the gym at 7:30
a.m. and conditioning before practice every single morning. "The thing no
one is talking about is what he is bringing to so many young players who
don't know how to be a pro," says Fred Whitfield, Wizards personnel director
and Jordan's close friend. "You can't tell them -- but they can see it. They
can see what time he gets there, they can see what he does, and what it
takes." 
Auras get in the way of actual people. Maybe if Jordan loses his aura, we
will finally get to know him better.
In the meantime, everyone else should mind his own aura.

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