Jordan knows precisely what he said to Abe Pollin a few months after Game 6 from the 1998 Finals, Air Jordan 13 during the last NBA lockout, when he would be a player in the forefront of the union's negotiations. "If you can't make a profit, you should sell your team," he reportedly shouted in the then-74-year-old who had owned the Bullets/Wizards franchise provided Jordan have been alive.
Younger crowd knows how he battled the Bulls' Jerry Reinsdorf on his last two contracts, in those final two title seasons of 1997 and '98, to get what he was entitled to, whether Reinsdorf thought paying a player $30 million annually would ruin him or otherwise.
Now that Jordan, as principal who owns the Charlotte Bobcats, is reportedly leading a faction of hardline owners pressing the league to simply accept no compromise, not to budge beyond the debated 50-50 split, to consider his franchise's supposed setbacks out of the players' hides in the exact way he denied owners throughout his previous life... no way, he hasn't forgotten that.
If Jordan hasn't forgotten who beat him from the last varsity spot when he is at 10th grade-and if he didn't go to the lengths he did to stick it for the reason that unsuspecting player's face 30 years later at his Hall of Fame induction-then he hasn't missed how complete this transformation of direction continues to be.
Understand what else he knows? That Michael Jordan made the NBA what it's today, what it is still 13 years after that shot over Russell, even what it is eight years after he walked away from the Wizards, Pollin and the playing career permanently.
And Jordan recognizes that he, himself, is going to help bring that whole creation crashing down, ready to have a lockout which has destroyed a month of this season and threatens to keep wiping it out until the entire months are gone, if that's what must be done to get what he wants.
Jordan knows all of that. They know that you know all that. And if he's the same Jordan who took that internal raging inferno to scorch the NBA earth like a player, who fuels it with every, slight real and imagined, who is his generation's poster child for hating to lose compared to he likes to win, then he knows one more thing:
He doesn't care if you like it or otherwise.
Which will never cease to amaze. There can be no athlete of any era who banked as much around the public's approval, Soccer Jerseys yet cared less about it. It's not even obvious whether this is the greatest test of this inherent contradiction. But it's a big one.
If the Jordan-led faction of owners gets its way, the 2011-12 season is within grave danger. It was anyway, when owners like the Cavaliers' Dan Gilbert, the Suns' Robert Sarver and also the Trail Blazers' Paul Allen were pushing that agenda and serving as the stinkbugs on the windowsill of negotiations.
For Jordan-younger than the majority of his ownership brethren, newer towards the club and from clearly another background mindset-to grind his method to the front is at a means miraculous, and in another way inevitable. It's think about grab his teammates by the neckholes of their jerseys and drag these phones his level by force of will; to go in this realm and the actual same to people who've lived around wealth, power and entitlement is another.
But it's what happens when the first is that driven to get what he wants-on his terms and none other.
It was admirable when he made it happen in jaw-to-jaw with Pollin, albeit a little unsightly, considering Pollin's age and his reputation as a gentle, charitable soul. It was extra-admirable when he did it with Reinsdorf, because Jordan was correct on principle. The Bulls owner was not entitled to milk Jordan to enrich himself without rewarding Jordan accordingly, nor was Reinsdorf facing either imminent bankruptcy or associated with utter control of his franchise by doing the work.
It's still the case with NBA ownership today. The fact that Jordan is on the other side of the table doesn't allow it to be untrue. Jordan has to understand that. He needs to know that the players realize it, too. They're in the middle of a spate of infighting that, in the end, might cost them a year of the livelihoods, Fabregas Jersey no matter whose side gets edge on the revenue split.
Amidst all of that, those players certainly are aware that their hero is a turncoat. The man who was the stuff of the dreams, posters, videos and motivations, whose talent and feeling of worth made billion-dollar arguments possible-that man is standing with the component, marshaling his forces against them, taking from them what he once loudly and unflinchingly proclaimed was the just reward for their ability, sweat and sacrifice.
But that was then, this is now. Jordan played then and desired to get his. He owns now, and that he wants to get his again. They know they are fully aware it. And he doesn't care if they do.
Enrique due Spain call-up – Stuart Downing
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