Last September, a Chicago Bulls number 23 jersey, worn by Michael Jordan on the occasion of his last NBA title , in 1998, was sold at Sotheby's for 10.1 million dollars. Is it enough to explain who is still today the legend of basketball, who turns 60 next Friday, February 17 ?

No, you have to add the six NBA champion rings, two Olympic gold medals (Los Angeles 1984 and Barcelona 1992), a university title, five times MVP of the North American championship and six of the finals, 14 times All Star, Rookie of the year in 1985 , the only player in history to be voted the best defenseman in the league and the best player overall in the same season. One of the very few to have won three 'rings' in a row: 1,099 games in which he scored at least 20 points and exceeded 60 in five. And then the cartoon dedicated to him - Space Jam -, the TV series, that flight in the air to crush which has become a symbol (commercial, of course, but not only) immediately recognizable all over the world. If in tennis we are divided between fans of Federer and Nadal and in football there is a debate about who was the greatest between Pelé and Maradona, in basketball the doubt about the best ever does not exist: it is Air Jordan.

« He made the NBA and professional sports what they are today, globally. Before the multimillion-dollar deals, live television broadcasts and sponsor waltzes, few outside the United States followed NBA games in the media. Then he came along », wrote Pulitzer prize winner David Halberstam, biographer of the Brooklyn-born champion. And everything changed. Despite having retired from the business for a couple of years (1993-1995). Numbers and results that explain why MJ was a basketball watershed.

In Chicago they have dedicated a statue to him which is one of the most visited attractions, even among the aborigines or in the most remote corners of Africa it is possible to come across someone with the Bulls vest n.23. His Airness (another of his nicknames) was born the son of James Jordan, a General Electric worker who wished him a baseball star. 38 caliber gunshot to the chest in rural South Carolina in 1993. Perhaps a robbery gone bad, or an attempted kidnapping to ask for a ransom from the already very rich son. Be that as it may, MJ loved the basket and the desire remained even after the exclusion from the team in the second high school. For a year he trained alone and at 19 he was already considered a monster, dragging North Carolina to the university title with a decisive shot a few seconds from the end of the final.

At 21 he took his first Olympic gold, in Los Angeles, while two years later, at the end of a playoff game at the Boston Garden won by Chicago thanks to his star's 63 points, he made a great man like Larry Bird say: « That wasn't Jordan, but God disguised as Jordan .' He was the embodiment of the Dream Team concept. Had it not been for Muhammad Ali and his immense charisma, Jordan would almost certainly have been awarded the Athlete of the Century title by the end of 2000. As a player, he was able to 'float' in the air before hitting a jump shot, beat gravity to make a spectacular dunk, even more than those of his teenage idol, Doctor J' Erving.

After all, apart from coach Phil Jackson's schemes and 'triangles', the Bulls, since the days of the previous coach Doug Collins, have always had a back-up solution to attack the basket: «Ball to Jordan, and the others out of the boxes ». Air has become a 10 billion brand, and in 2002 he paid $ 168 million for his divorce from his wife Juanita Vanoy. It was a trend that fascinated millions of kids: "be like Mike" wasn't just a lucky advertising slogan. When he returned to basketball, 17 months after his first retirement, he was delirious, even if he almost had to leave his magical 23.

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