Where are my full Chicago Bulls seasons, years 84-93, and 96-98? All 82 games, plus the playoffs and all star games. Who are we kidding? Every ANAL yst wants to proclaim Lebron James or Kobe Bryant to the throne of MJ, but watch his games, not the ten second clip run on repeat every time MJ is mentioned. I know of at least a handful of people who would buy complete seasons of Michael Jordan playing basketball, and they're not even Bulls fans. He was amazing. Night in, night out. How many times do you, does anybody say, man I can't wait to watch that Grizzlies game and see Big Country get housed. Parked in front of the couch for Hawks and Clippers games, watching scrubs (they're all scrubs against MJ) like Ron Harper and Stacey Augmon try to man up on THE man. He wanted the other team to have to look themselves in the mirror after a defeat and say, "My best wasn't even close to good enough." How do you not want to watch that for a minimum 97 games (only had to watch 5 games in the first round of the playoffs back then)? And I'm not just talking that one year of 72 victories. That year was boring, except for the shoes. The best Jordans ever. He was passing and lobbying for Scottie to win MVP, but we all know who ran the show. And so did Scottie. He wasn't throwing fits when the Man was around was he?
Now the only other person who reminds me of watching Jordan is Dwayne Wade. It's beautiful. I was going to watch a horrendous Knicks game just to watch Dwayne Wade play (About the Knicks: I swear I remember in basketball practice doing drills where we had to run offense and make a minimum of 10 passes before shooting the ball and if we didn’t, we ran. I think I-hate-yah Thomas runs drills where more than one pass is cause for sprints. Douche chill). I digress. Wade didn't play that night. I had to turn away. But seriously, I’ve never seen anybody pull shots out of his ass more similarly to Mike than Wade. Kobe doesn’t get the air time. Lebron is too tall and doesn’t get the air time. Wade, he glides baby. Smoother than silk, and whoop, a nick, and bam behind the shoulder left handed off the wrong foot. Bank. No rim. The best thing he learned from Jordan, we all learned from Yoda and Kaiser Sose. He’ll get up from a fall and ever so gingerly walk back to the line, sink his throws, play some D, grab a ‘bound and then do that misdirection spin move fade away as if he’s taking his empty cereal bowl to the kitchen sink. You’re a sucker if you think he’s really hurt.
D Wade’s got no problem giving credit to the MAN. He’d watch 82. Everyone in the league is around 6 years within my age, and those who are older know even better what it was like to watch him play, to be amazed. It was a continuous rebirth for us Generation Jordaners. Like mimicking Kareem with the sky hook, we’ve all got our bastardized version of the fade away.
“Sometimes I dream
That he is me
You've got to see that's how I dream to be
I dream I move, I dream I groove
Like Mike
If I could Be Like Mike
Again I try
Just need to fly
For just one day if I could
Be that way
I dream I move
I dream I groove
Like Mike
If I could Be Like Mike”
I bet 90% of the league could quote that song, verbatim.
Just show reruns of old Sportscenters too, when they showed MJ highlights first, and then talked hockey and then showed highlights of EVERY game that night and we didn’t have to watch Sean Salsbury’s slack-jawed flapper for 45 minutes of a 49 minute show. Who’s he schtupping to get that much airtime? Seriously.
It’s not that hard. I don’t think it’s too much to ask. They don’t have to cut anything. I’ll even fast forward through the commercials, or have a Jordan channel on the television and keep the commercials. I bet a good percentage of those crappy advertisements are identical to the crappy advertisements now. 82 games times 12 years, hell add the baseball fiasco and the Wizards fiasco, times the two and a half hours per game = a minimum 2460 hours of programming. Loop that year round until the apocalypse and it’ll be in the top 20 channels, period. Now don’t go stealing my idea.
I mean it. It might just be dumb enough to work.