When Nothing Else Matters

he was a man at ease talking about possibilities, having invented himself out of fantasies. He saw them not as delusions but as prelude—visions to be realized, destiny at the end of the lane he was bursting through

the best coaches seemed to say something quickly and then step away

Jordan tested everyone, and that the test never ended.

We romanticize the banal, and catalog the silly. We have churned out so many of these stories, competently, even artfully, that at some point long ago we succeeded in making the ridiculous relevant.

Once Jordan turned on people, his hostility was everlasting

What set him apart in all kinds of games was his fearlessness in the face of possibilities, good and bad. He had no worries about uncertainty, about randomness, about in-and-out shots, about dice rolls, about blackjack hands, about scoring or not scoring. The simplicity of what was about to happen in those moments put him at ease. It was so different from the rest of life, he thought, where so many things could happen. When you took a shot, he’d tell people, only one of two things could happen: You were either going to make it or you were going to miss it.

Finally, a Wizards official, concerned for Lue and convinced that Collins’s micromanagement of the games had become counterproductive, urged Lue to stop giving so much of his attention to Collins. “You don’t have to look at him,” the official said to Lue. “You don’t have to slow down, you don’t have to turn your head his way. You can listen if you want, but don’t look. You don’t have to listen to everything Michael is yelling out there either. You’re trying to please too many people.”

I’d always wondered what could draw people, night after night, to what is after all just a game. But in a world marred by so much imperfection and loss, on frigid winter days when the sun died too early and a man felt the chill of his life’s regrets, it was nice sometimes just to drive to the arena with the defroster on and contemplate the possibility of seeing Michael Jordan perform brilliantly, to imagine fallaway jumpers rippling nets, again and again. There is a benefit to being reminded that we are not so hardhearted that we cannot be moved like small children, that there remains room in our lives for something as mysterious as magic. That is why we always have had sports, loved sports. And there are winners there, unambiguous winners. It can be uplifting, when, in truth, not much else is.

But there are limits to what deference can get you. Maybe men cannot love those who need their love too much. Jordan appreciated Collins, who had given him whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it—given Jordan everything except a reason to revere him.

Winter never thought he understood him, mystified over why a man so beloved so often played the part of a tormentor. “For some reason, Michael gets a satisfaction out of humiliating people,” he said. “I think it might be part of his competitive nature. I think he competes even there…[in] personal relationships.”