Jesus in Nikes - Review

National Review, Feb 22, 1999 by Erica Schacter

Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made, by David Halberstam (Random House, 426 pp., $24.95)

Long before Michael Jordan announced his retirement from professional basketball, sports columnists, corporate sponsors, and NBA fans all wondered who could ever fill the shoes of "Jesus in Nikes." As this Jordanless season now begins (the first in 14 years, minus his baseball stint), David Halberstam offers both the nostalgia and the evaluation that a career like Jordan's demands.

He provides a crash course in Jordan-ology for those who somehow missed the footage (read: have not watched TV anytime this decade) of vintage Jordan moments-like the game-winning shot against Georgetown in the 1982 NCAA Finals, which Jordan hit as a University of North Carolina freshman; or the move against Sam Perkins of the Lakers in the 1991 NBA Finals, where in "mid-flight" the gravity-defying Jordan switched the ball to his left hand before slamming it through the hoop.

Of course, these moves are better seen than read about, and while any portrait of arguably the best basketball player ever must include some performance highlights, Halberstam scores his real narrative success off the court. He takes us back to Wilmington, N.C., where Michael failed to make Laney High School's varsity team his sophomore year. He introduces us to Michael's father James, who used to fix cars with his tongue sticking out. He captures Jordan lugging the North Carolina team's film projector, a humiliating task to ensure that the up-and-coming star never got a swelled head. (It didn't work.) And we hear the phone call Michael's father received on June 19, 1984, after the Chicago Bulls drafted his son (as the No. 3 pick). "Move over Oscar Robertson and Jerry West," an old high-school coach of Michael's said, "because the greatest guard in basketball history has just been drafted."

What's particularly effective about Halberstam's storytelling is that he follows Jordan's athletic trajectory, not in chronological order but through juxtaposed images of a hot-blooded college player with an as- yet-unpolished game and an even-tempered 30-year-old at the height of his career. Jordan was not born a flawless pro, but developed his gifts by working tirelessly and intensely. His competitive drive exceeded that of wannabe peers, and this, Halberstam argues, is one of the reasons Michael Jordan is Michael Jordan.

But alongside this how-did-Michael-get-so-good story, Halberstam turns to the larger Jordan question: How did one individual come to "dominate not just [basketball] itself but the psyche of American sports fans"?

Don't laugh, but Jordan's career actually raises an intriguing philosophical question. Does a man shape the events of his life, or is he merely shaped by them? Did Michael Jordan transform the world of sports in general, and basketball in particular, or was he transformed by circumstances? From the book's subtitle-"Michael Jordan and the World He Made"-the reader assumes that Halberstam will argue against historical determinism. But the truth is, Halberstam's is a map less of the world Jordan made than of the world in which he was made. The stories and details here suggest that a confluence of forces and events- good timing, technological and commercial change, and an influential cast of characters-paved the way for Jordan's basketball reign.

How so? The sports cable channel ESPN began broadcasting in 1979, but "truly came of age" in 1984, Michael's first year in the NBA, giving professional and college basketball significantly more coverage. In 1991, NBC, having bought the NBA televising rights from CBS, worked effectively to increase its ratings; this happened to be the first season Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls made it to the Finals. As viewers soon realized, Jordan's charismatic good looks did not suffer on-screen. Simultaneously, in the world of advertising, the Eighties witnessed the eruption of the sneaker wars. Since football cleats and baseball spikes don't have much in the way of mass appeal, the marketable athletes were all basketball players.

Yet against this traffic pileup of impersonal historical forces there stands Game 6 of the 1998 Finals, especially that fourth quarter-which turned out to be Michael Jordan's final, fittingly climactic twelve minutes of playing time.

A few days after the game, Jordan and his teammates were celebrating on their home turf. Most were aware it was the end of the Chicago Bulls dynasty as we know it. Scottie Pippen-a player who would have shined more brightly had he not performed alongside Jordan-turned to Michael and said, "None of this could have happened without you." Jordan, Pippen meant to say, was not merely in the right place at the right time, or privileged to know the right people. He made his success happen. Perhaps Halberstam ends with this moment, "a great player toasting an even greater player," to leave us with this last thought.

Other superstars are good-looking, and they have modeled Nikes. But how many of them have turned around so many games on their own? How many speak as eloquently in interviews? How many can cut a dashing figure even when playing golf, a sport that seems to encourage dowdiness? How many have a wife, children, and a family life acknowledged to be exemplary? How many have a sense of humor with referees, journalists, and fans? Put all these qualities together in a photogenic 6'6" frame and you'll see why no other player will leave the same mark in the annals of sports history as #23 of the Chicago Bulls.