Basketball fans were excited to hear of Michael Jordan’s return to the NBA. The commercial market was even more thrilled of Air Jordan’s comeback. But is the hype surrounding Jordan all it’s cracked up to be?
Whenever you turn on ESPN or read the sports section of the newspaper, you hear about Michael’s performance that night. Not only do you get this information every day, but it typically seems to be the highlight of the previous night.
Sure, Jordan as a player has been performing exceeding well, but he is nowhere near what he used to be. In fact, he scored some of his lowest point totals in his career this year playing for the Washington Wizards.
If Jordan would have returned to basketball with a better team, such as the Los Angeles Lakers, I could understand why he would still be a hot topic of discussion.
However, the NBA season is soon approaching its midseason mark and the Wizards are only a mediocre 19-19. This is a big improvement over last year at this time when the Wizards were a dismal 7-31, but they are still seven games behind the New Jersey Nets in the Atlantic Division standings.
The time has come for all journalists to move past Jordan’s return and to get back to normalcy.
Jordan is a living legend in basketball ? that is undeniable. But his return has gotten far too much attention. His supreme reign of basketball is coming to an end. Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson are just a few of the names who are starting to fill those shoes. Let’s concentrate more of our attention on them, rather than on a player who appears to be past his prime.
Cupp can be reached at dcupp@campustimes.org.
