We should be sick of Michael Jordan. We should send him--his Italian suits, wagging tongue, faint mustache and gold hoop earring--straight back to the '80s where he belongs. This is a guy who's had his own shoe since 1985. Are we still watching Miami Vice and moonwalking and wearing skinny ties? Come on, people. Move on.
But we can't. Sure, it's un-American not to back the underdog, but even the hardworking, muttily named Utah Jazz (did Satchmo summer in Salt Lake?), with its working-class Mailman and great white hopes, couldn't drag us away from Jordan's charm. For a spasm of a second last month, it seemed O.K. if Larry Bird's Pacers won the conference championship--there was mythological resonance to the protagonist's being felled by a warrior ghost--but by Game 7, we were right back in our proper seats behind Jordan. We wanted one more hit of Jordan's hyperintensity, and we were willing to sacrifice our belief system for it.
Because, if you haven't heard, this series may be Jordan's last. The complex derivative of keeping Jordan in the NBA probably involves the rehiring of coach Phil Jackson, who publicly feuds with both blowhard Bulls general manager Jerry Krause and cheapskate owner Jerry Reinsdorf. Jordan steadfastly refuses to play without Jackson. That could probably be resolved (suck it up for one more year, Krause). But Jordan, 35, most likely won't return without sidekick Scottie Pippen. Pippen originally refused to play this year, despises Krause even more than do Jackson and Jordan (who, high-school-style, doesn't say hi to Krause when they pass in the halls). In fact, he is so eager to go to another team to prove he's the second-best player in the NBA that he and his brother have been marketing "Last Dance" merchandise during the play-offs. But it's really much simpler than that. "Not that he's particularly attached to me, maybe not attached to the system of basketball," explains Jackson. "It's just the whole thing that's grown around us: the friendship, the reliability, the privacy that he has working here." Think about it: for the last year of your storied career, you wouldn't want Donnie the intern stopping by your office every five minutes yelling, "Hey, Mike, there's a guy downstairs who says he knows you."
According to the Vancouver Province, Jordan has put a deposit on a summer rental on the coast in West Vancouver, Canada, a posh suburb where his neighbors would be folks like Bryan Adams. There, with the chords of Cuts Like a Knife wafting out to the Pacific, Jordan could decide whether to re-retire. (He left for 1 1/2 years to play baseball, and--since he refused for a long time to talk to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED after it criticized him--let's just say as an outfielder he was an outstanding shooting guard.) His agent David Falk told TIME at Friday's game, "Being the great decision maker that he is, he's going to take some time after the season is over and get away from it for a while, and have a chance to really think it through and probably make a decision sometime in July or August. And whatever he decides, whatever makes him happy, will make me happy."