Vittles is the social center of our worlds. Consider one conversation overheard in there on Tuesday, after a plane crashed into the Pentagon:
“Dude, yea … like, we probably won’t have classes tomorrow.”
“And the cops will be busy with stuff.”
“Yea, let’s get a keg!”
Gadzooks. Georgetown’s a shed. If you didn’t get that joke, think “full of tools.”
But it was another convo at Vittles that same day that intrigued me even more:
“Dude, did you hear the news?”
“Yea, Jordan’s coming back!”
“Umm, you should watch the news.”
Despite being overshadowed by a horrific act of terrorism, MJ’s return is still major news in the sports community. However, it’s not good news, despite what the editor of this section seems to feel. The editor of this section also feels that the Reds have a chance every March, so you can throw out his athletic commentary most every time. The Wizards will not contend for anything, except Eastern Conference ticket sales, harshly ripping away the only honor that the Hornets ever receive. Sure, they have Kwame Brown, and they have Doug Collins pacing the bench, but my litmus test for a team is that, if you get done up by Khalid El-Amin (“El Gordo”), such as he did to the Bullets in a summer league game, you ain’t going very far during the regular season. The last team El-Amin did up like that was, ummm, us. Shapland still hasn’t recovered from that pass off the glass to Albert Mouring. Neither have I. I joined a Yahoo! Fan club about Jake Voskuhl soon after, just to send obscene messages to it. Hehe.
Jordan left basketball at the top of his game: He buried the championship-winning shot. Every athlete dreams of going out like that. Instead, he has chosen to return to a horrific arena, a horrific management, a horrific team. They can’t even make cheese fries right at MCI, much less play basketball. Jordan’s already pulled this, as well. Remember the whole minor league baseball experiment? We should call him “Sugar Ray Jordan” based on his sheer amount of comebacks.
I don’t like to see David Stern happy. He looks like a rat, and his suits don’t fit correctly. When I see him happy, I cringe. Jordan’s return makes Mr. Stern very happy, because now every Washington vs. Toronto game, which six months ago was the centerpiece of a standup routine, now becomes the NBA Game of the Week. Every game is going to be billed, all over the sports media, as “Jordan vs. (Insert Opponent’s Hot Young Star Here).” I can see it now:
Trey Wingo-”Jordan vs. James Posey!”
Stuart Scott?”Jordan vs. Adonal Foyle! Threeeeeee-cola!!!”
It’s going to get old very quickly. Jordan was much better off staying up in the top office, watching the slow development of Kwame Brown, making a few more Hanes ads (Don’t you miss those? I do.), and maybe penning a few books. He is the greatest player ever to grip a basketball, and what he could do once he gripped it defines imagination, context, even the boundaries of normal human understanding. But, he was at the top of the mountain when he left, and he is returning to the valley low.
In 1998, ESPN Magazine took the picture of him draining that shot and listed the name and occupation of all the pictured fans, behind the basket. Like I’m sure they all do right now, I feel cheated.
