Kobe and Shaq may own the latest model in championship rings, but when it comes to the NBA coffers, nobody brings the cha-ching quite like Washington Wizards guard Michael Jordan.
Forty-nine games into the third coming of the league's monetary messiah, Jordan has shed a light on the growing gloom of NBA enterprise.
Through Feb. 12, NBA and Wizards attendance were both up, sales of NBA apparel were up and league ratings on the three major networks that televise NBA games — NBC, TBS and TNT — were up anywhere from six percent to 15 percent.
NBC recently added two Wizards telecasts to its March schedule to take advantage.
"Michael's always been good for business," said NBA deputy commissioner Russ Granik. "I don't want to put it in terms of us needing him, but the NBA can always use Michael Jordan."
Nowhere is that more apparent than at NBA arenas where Jordan had played to 23 sellouts in 23 road dates entering Thursday's game at always-sold-out Arco Arena in Sacramento.
"That team would have had a hard time selling out any building around the league without him," Suns CEO Jerry Colangelo said of the erstwhile dreadful Wizards.
But through Wednesday, Jordan's surprisingly competitive Wizards led the NBA in average road attendance at 20,630 per game while selling out all 25 home dates (20,674 average) this season at Washington's MCI Center.
That's five sellouts short of the club record set in 1994-95 when it played at the smaller Capital Centre. It's also an increase of 5,295 fans over last season's attendance, about the same jump the team has experienced in road attendance.
"The city has really taken to him," Wizards chairman Abe Pollin said. "The atmosphere at every game is just fantastic. We've got 20,000 fans filling the restaurants, the bars, the metro and our building. There's a feeling of excitement. Every time the team takes the court it's an event." Of course, this is nothing new for Jordan. Everywhere he went in his 13 Hall of Fame seasons with Chicago (six of them ended in championships) the Bulls received the Beatles treatment. Arenas were sold out, vendors were sold out of No. 23 apparel and ratings soared to all-time highs as America, even the world, tuned in to catch a glimpse of the NBA's all-time greatest player and one of the globe's most recognizable athletes.
But when Jordan retired for the second time after the 1997-98 season — an acrimonious parting with Bulls management that broke up a reigning championship team — the prevailing sentiment around the league was that it was time to move on. Jordan had been a boon to NBA profits, but commissioner David Stern thought the league had enough star power to carry on without Jordan.
Stern was wrong.
In the three seasons Jordan was away, NBA attendance dipped, ratings sank and discontent with the league's players and ownership grew.
"It didn't help that we had a problem with the Players Association and a lockout (in 1998)," Pollin said. "That had a tremendously negative effect on the league and it's taken a while for us to come out of it."
Especially without the game's greatest star.
"I'm not sure the media or the fans were prepared for his departure because he was still at the height of his game," Colangelo said.
Granik agreed.
"I think there's always a lag time after a player like that leaves," he said. "Because he was so great, there's this vacuum that has to be filled and the players who eventually stepped up — guys like Kobe (Bryant), Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady, Kevin Garnett, Shaq (O'Neal) and Ray Allen — were too young at the time, so the public didn't know who they were. They weren't ready to embrace them."
Granik believes the timing of Jordan's return was perfect.
"If he came back a year earlier I think it could have been a negative thing for the NBA," Granik said. "With all the negative press we were getting and the bad feelings about the lockout, people might have thought Michael came back to save the league. But after last year's playoffs, a lot of players emerged and established themselves."
For that reason, Colangelo believes the transition to the next post-Jordan era — Jordan's contract expires after the 2002-03 season — will be smoother. "He's played so well, but he's not the same Michael Jordan. He can't dominate the way he used to. I think even the All-Star Game was a sort of passing of the baton," Colangelo said. "No one player is going to pick up that mantle. Nobody can. But I think there's a handful of very talented individuals who can do that and will."
In the meantime, players, owners, media and NBA brass will enjoy myriad returns on Jordan's unparalleled star power. "Players get more excited when he's playing," said Garnett, who grew up in Chicago and often plays with Jordan in the offseason. "It creates opportunities for players and coaches who didn't get a chance to play against him before and it's created a number of business opportunities for the league.
"It's done wonders like it always has. Hell, he's done the impossible, taking Washington to a near-contender in the East."
Nobody knows that better than Pollin.
"I don't know if Michael will play past his contract. I don't know if he can because he'll be 40 years old," Pollin said. "Maybe he can play more than two more years. He's certainly proven he's not like the rest of us. If he can, I doubt we'll tell him no."