Less magic for Michael Jordan and the Wizards

| Written by admin | under Wizards

There’s a record in the NBA that most 40-year-old fans and aging baby boomers could draw inspiration from. This record was set when Michael Jordan and the Wizards were still on the best of terms. It happened during one game on February 21, 2003 when Michael was still playing for the Washington franchise, and he tallied 43 points to become the first NBA player in the 40 years bracket to have scored that much. Despite his advanced years by players’ standards, Jordan was still a force to reckon with while with the Wizards, averaging 20 points per game in addition to contributing 3.8 assists as well as 1.5 steals per outing.

What’s sad, however, was that despite Michael’s heroics the Washington Wizards failed to make any of the playoffs during his stint with this team in 2001-2003. Nevertheless, Michael Jordan and the Wizards remained the top draw among NBA teams, with all their games at the MCI Center always before a sell-out crowd. Overall, the Washington squad was then polled as among the most popular NBA teams, with more than 20,000 spectators in home games and almost an equal amount on the road. But success on the hard court eluded the Wizards, leading to open criticism of team mates by the driven Jordan who was their president. Looking back, Jordan had expressed regrets over coming out of retirement to join the Washington Wizards, saying that he was used by franchise owner Abe Pollin who unceremoniously booted him out as president of basketball of operations, leading to Michael’s falling out with the team in 2003.

What Jordan was expecting then was to run the Wizards after his playing career is over, but unfortunately Pollin was not pursuing that direction which completely took the NBA icon by surprise. Jordan said he wouldn’t have come back to play had he known of Pollin’s tack.

All things considered, the Wizards stint is one chapter in Michael’s playing career that he perhaps would rather forget. For while running the basketball operations of the Washington franchise, Michael also made some gaffes in addition to the lambasting in media he unleashed on some of his underperforming team mates. Many basketball critics have also jumped on Jordan’s apparent poor choice of Kwane Brown as the Washington Wizard’s top pick in the 2001 NBA draft when Jordan was top operations honcho for the franchise. As Michael himself would later say, it turned out Brown just didn’t have the intensity and focus to bring their team out of the rut.

The funny thing is the bad experience of Michael Jordan and the Wizards seems to have found an echo in Jordan’s current job as managing partner of the Charlotte Bobcats. This time the deal involves ex-Gonzaga star player Adam Morrison, the first player Michael drafted in 2006 for the Bobcats. Morrison, the third overall pick for that season, has performed below par for Jordan and the Charlotte Bobcats. Now, together with guard Shannon Brown, Morrison has been traded to the LA Lakers for Vladimir Radmanovic, who has also seen action as a Sonics wingman. As a basketball executive, what Jordan is showing is that His Airness is human after all.