The name Michael Jordan is synonymous with greatness. The NBA legend is widely considered the greatest player of all time. Jordan had a terrific career with the Chicago Bulls, winning six championships in the Windy City. Moreover, he made sure to confirm his greatness -as if he needed to- with the Washington Wizards, the last team he played for before retiring in 2003.
The season before that one, Jordan was lifting his team’s level, putting up good numbers for a 38-year-old, and signing his name on the list of MVP candidates. Mike Wise wrote for the New York Times in 2002 how big Jordan’s 2001/02 season was, proclaiming him a likely MVP candidate. MJ led the Wizards to an 18-16 record before the middle of the season, a big change from the prior campaign, where they won 19 games total.
He turned that team into a competitive one and that was his biggest achievement in D.C. He had some vintage performances, of course, but the impact he made on the team was too big not to notice it.
Who else besides Jason Kidd, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett has been more important to his team? O’Neal and Chris Webber have been injured, and neither Tracy McGrady nor Vince Carter has elevated his team to the top of the Eastern Conference. Allen Iverson, the reigning M.V.P., is muddling through a disappointing season in Philadelphia.
Jordan, who has won five M.V.P. awards, is not in the running because of his numbers, which are All-Star caliber (24.2 points a game before last night’s loss to Minnesota in which he scored 35) but not quite M.V.P. worthy. His recent back-to-back outbursts of 51 and 45 points have little to do with why he is a genuine candidate. Along with that surreal two-handed block of Ron Mercer nine days ago, those were merely blasts from the past.
Jordan is an M.V.P. candidate because he did the improbable again: he got his teammates, the once-woeful Wizards, to believe in themselves.
In the final quarter of that season, Jordan’s knees failed and sidelined him, but the things he was doing until that moment were pretty good for a guy his age. Nobody would think a 38-year-old is to be considered an MVP candidate. Kobe Bryant retired in 2016 and that year the Lakers registered the worst record in the history of the franchise.
His Airness had a big chance to take the Wizards to compete in the East, but his body didn’t help him. In the end, the Wizards went from the third-worst record in the league to be a playoff contender. They finished the season with a 37-45 record, sitting 10th in the East.
We never know what would have happened if Jordan never went down, but he did finish 13th in the MVP ballot that awarded Tim Duncan as the Most Valuable Player in the league. This was another proof of Michael’s greatness. That man did everything he wanted to wherever he went.
