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opinion:
chef ben's stew
Jordan will help
boost economy
On the basketball
court, Michael Jordan was the epitome of athleticism, the icon
of his era and carried with him a Babe Ruth-like aura that captivated
the sold-out crowds who gathered to watch him play.
Jordan was simply
the best the game had ever seen.
However, the keyword
here is was.
After six NBA championships,
10 scoring titles and an award for defensive player of the
year, the 38-year-old Jordan, who is the current president
of the Washington Wizards, has seriously entertained thoughts
of returning to the sport he once fiercely dominated.
Jordan has been
practicing with top-flight NBA players in an attempt to regain
his old form and is supposedly going to officially announce
within days his decision of whether to come out of retirement,
according to reports from The Associated Press and ESPN.com.
Jordan was quick,
agile and utterly unstoppable. Now he is considerably older
and slower. But who cares if Jordan wants to compete
again?
Bottom line - absolutely
no one will care about Jordan's new basketball endeavor as
a player.
If Jordan definitively
decides to suit up and compete for the Wizards, I would honestly
be surprised if more than a handful of people even noticed
that he made a comeback.
All that I, like
many others, am thinking about is how lucrative his imminent
return will be for everyone - the NBA, the Wizards organization,
and the U.S. economy.
Forbes magazine
once featured a story about the "Jordan effect," which stated
that Jordan was responsible for $10 billion in revenues for
the national economy over his 13-year career.
The fiscal boost
resulted from Jordan's participation in or promotion of such
companies as Nike, Gatorade, Hanes, Ballpark hotdogs, Rayovac
batteries and, of course, the Chicago Bulls organization.
Imagine Jordan's
comeback prompting an immediate impact on the national economy.
Hopefully, Jordan
can catalyze soaring revenues nationwide once again, especially
since he is probably incapable of soaring to the hoop nowadays.
I wish Jordan would
return this season because the United States needs all the
help it can to get the economy on track again. And it would
be nice to see Kobe Bryant score 30 points on and run circles
around Jordan.
However, in the
best interest of the national economy, Jordan should come
back, considering he is the only person who can take nothing
[the lowly Chicago Bulls] and turn it into something [six
NBA titles].
"What were the
Chicago Bulls before Michael Jordan? Cows," said legendary
Los Angeles Lakers commentator Chick Hearns during an ESPN
interview.
Ben Dimapindan
is a print journalsm major at Cal State Long Beach.
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