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That day Jordan made his debut against the Indiana Pacers, and though he shot only 7 of 28, he moved well considering he had been playing baseball for a year. The game, on NBC, was the most-watched regular-season N.B.A. game in history. Three nights later, in his final appearance in the soon-to-be-scrapped Boston Garden, he scored 27 points in just 26 minutes. His performance was nearly as impressive as the 63 points he scored in a 1986 play-off game on the same parquet floor.
Greatness has a price, though. For some fans, it was the four-figure ticket. Jordan's touching sentiment on his change of uniform numbers--he didn't want to wear his old 23 if his late father couldn't see it--was somewhat diminished by the fact that even as he played his first game, the Champion sportswear company was turning out Jordan 45 jerseys. Sometimes with Jordan, you don't know where the reality ends and the commercial begins. Asked what playing minor-league baseball did for him, he said, "It helped me realize what was important to me. It was like going to my guru." The reference, of course, was to the Gatorade ad in which a guru advises him, "Life is a sport. Drink it up." At $1 for a 12-oz. bottle in Plainfield, Indiana.
Actually, the guru is wrong. Sport is a parquet floor, with crossing patterns of excellence and exploitation. Tyson's story is perhaps the best example of that. When legendary boxing maestro Cus D'Amato discovered Tyson in an upstate New York reformatory, he was a bad kid from Brooklyn. D'Amato didn't exactly turn him into a saint, but he did channel Tyson's aggression into boxing. D'Amato died in 1985, but Tyson continued to improve as a fighter and as a human being. After he knocked out Pinklon Thomas in their 1987 championship fight, Tyson went over to his opponent to see if he was okay. Then he hugged trainer Kevin Rooney and manager Jimmy Jacobs. When Don King came over to hug him, Tyson wanted nothing to do with him.
But that was then. In 1988 Tyson's life spun out of control. There was the marriage to Robin Givens, the death of Jacobs, a pact with King, a car crash, the firing of Rooney. By the time Tyson fought 42-to-1 underdog Buster Douglas in February of 1990, he was out of shape, and Douglas KO'd him in the 10th round.
Then came the fateful Miss Black America pageant in Indianapolis in July '91. That is where and when Tyson terrorized and raped a star-struck contestant named Desiree Washington. On March 26, 1992, he began serving his six-year sentence. When King was recently asked if Tyson had any money left from the millions in purses he earned, the promoter replied, "Farmers can't count on last year's crops."
Tyson couldn't fight in prison, but that hasn't prevented people from fighting over him. In the week before Tyson's release, both King's people and the Muslims claimed that he would follow them. Playing off the famous plea--"No mas, no mas''--of Roberto Duran, King aide Mike Marley said, "No mosque, no mosque."
No matter who Tyson hooks up with, there is every expectation that the 28-year-old will once again regain at least one of the many heavyweight titles. "The division is such a joke," says Rooney, "that Tyson could fight tomorrow and win the title. But that's not the question. The question is whether he can be as good as he once was."