Michael Jordan ruined my childhood.
Saying I will forever have nightmares clouding my thoughts on account of Jordan is selling myself pretty short.
I couldn't look at a picture of the guy without welling up and wanting to lose my lunch.
The memories of watching the elegant rise, fling, and fall of the basketball, the clock reading 5.2 seconds, and the prototypical pose cemented it all.
Forever and ever.
That's what true mastery is.
Being so damn good that the guy will forever haunt the opposition and be the subject of insurmountable joyous conversations up until the very last breath.
That's what Michael Jordan was and, in a sense, still is.
The now 46-year-old Tar Heel, Bull, and Wizard was inducted into the Hall of Fame last week. His speech, acceptance, and overall demeanor were met with less than a grain of salt. They were met with a rather sour expectation of what was supposed to be one of the greatest speeches in the history of professional sports.
That's not Michael. Since when has he been a man to come out and read a quote from Aristotle or E.E. Cummings or Maya Angelou?
He hangs, he shines, he flies, and he wins. Yes, I purposely wrote that in a present vernacular, simply because that's how everyone else still frankly puts it.
Michael Jordan was the best sports athlete of all time.
People will dish out superfluous counter-arguments about Y.A. Tittle, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, or even Bill Russell.
People are also entitled to their opinion, or at least that's the rumor that's going around.
If you wish to measure a yardstick worth of such illustrious prominence, all you must do is look at the track record—the report card, if you may.
Michael's GPA was a 4.5. His six championships pit him behind a plethora of NBA legends: John Havlicek, Bob Cousy, and K.C. Jones, among others. Russell is King Midas himself with so much hardware, there's even one for Bill's big toe.
All former Celtics. One of the best dynasties ever.
Jordan, although he had the help of a fellow Hall of Famer in wingman Scottie Pippen, wowed the show he was directing mostly on his own.
People don't remember those six Chicago Bulls championship teams and quickly think of Ron Harper or Luc Longley.
Recently in a sit-down interview with ESPN's Michael Wilbon prior to the Hall ceremony, Jordan was asked what he thinks when people rattle off that he was the greatest to play the game of basketball.
MJ's response? It makes him cringe.
He conjured up the truths that he never played against Jerry West, never took Elgin Baylor off the dribble or drove at Mount Russell as he was on patrol near the hoop.
Right answer for the most driven sports figure in the history of competitive sports.
Jordan's will, determination, and ultimate succession makes the original Greek Olympians inconsequential. He makes Tim Tebow look like Ryan Leaf.
His ability and ascension to what was a level that no one else in the history of the game will ever reach was testament to what the game of basketball meant to one kid from the backwoods of North Carolina.
There was nothing else besides the ball, the court, and the hoop.
Someone once said that simplicity is bliss, and for Jordan, he made the impossible look too easy.
He made 103-degree fever obsolete with the 38 points accumulated and brains left scrambled in disbelief.
Six three-pointers in one half in an NBA Finals left even the God of basketball himself in utter astonishment.
He grinned, he laughed, and he raised his hands, merely asking, "What am I doing, and how exactly am I doing this?"
Even as his flawless response to a flawed question beckoned the perfected nature of Jordan himself, one could tell he had a few answers churning in that psyche of his.
His favorite MJ moment of all time?
"There's too many to count."
Whichever halfwit jackass of a journalist expected to receive a tearful response of a Game Six game-winning shot in the Delta Center should fully feel like he deserves a dunce cap.
Jordan, such an ambitious and zealous person, went off on a question he fully licked his chops at without giving it a second thought.
"I could still play the game if I wanted to play the game," Jordan told Wilbon, smirking with exuded confidence. "I can run with the young horses. Don't put me out grazing yet."
That's what he does best. He directs, produces, writes, and stars in the greatest show in the history of professional sports, and he does so with such silenced and conflicted resolve that he pulls it off without a soul being left in doubt.
The quintessential tease, Jordan even said in February of 1999, "I'm retired 99.9 percent. Of course, there's always that .1 percent."
Unrivaled summary of Air Jordan.
Could the knees, now aged 46, hold up Kobe, LeBron, or Wade from exploding into the paint? Probably not. But could those same knees back down, fake-twist-turn, and unfetter the most unparalleled shot ever?
I would love to see those young horses dare Mike.
Jordan said that the greatest game he ever played in was the 1992 Dream Team scrimmage in Monte Carlo.
A scrimmage. Not one of the six Finals he played in. Not the 14 All-Star games. A national championship? Pfft.
A scrimmage.
That's the proof. He's the best. He was, he still is.
The accolades speak for themselves, the list being so long it honestly takes time to check them all off.
Is Jordan the winningest basketball player of all time? No, he's tied for fifth all-time, but with the level of first-ballot Hall of Fame athletes and champions Jordan faced off against on a regular basis, it's hard to argue that he didn't deliver the best résumé.
People criticized Jordan for being quite contrived in his introductory speech. Critics said he was classless and self-indulgent.
Hey, when you're the best, you can do whatever you damn well please.
The entire planet knows who Michael Jordan is—and with good reason.
His unassailable way transcended the game of basketball into something that will forever be remembered by "MJ" and "23."
As the fire, currently dwindling and suppressed in the eyes of the greatest ever, showed, one question that wasn't asked certainly stood out.
Why did no one mention the "Redeem Team" and how MJ figured the Dream Team could've fared against the recent gold-medal winners?
I think Michael would've smiled, chuckled a few times, sent out a mass text to his guys, and called out the entire redeemers' team out there live, on worldwide TV.
But the redeemers wouldn't play. They're contractually obliged to Fortune 500 companies and wouldn't risk their nesting pot.
That wouldn't have mattered to Michael.
He would take them all on, one by one, until there wasn't anyone left.
That's why he is who he is. And that's why we saw what we all saw.
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