TOUR DE FORCE

PHOENIX —  As there was never a career like his, there has never been anything like Michael Jordan’s farewell tour, now winding its way through America without benefit of ceremony or acknowledgement.

It may be farewell but it’s not a tour, which is how Mike Jordan likes it. Imagine, at this late date in the life of this soaring conglomerate, a little unhyped corner he can call his own, where one can imagine anything, even winning another championship and walking off into the sunset.

“Again?” Jordan asks, laughing in delight. “I can imagine that. I can. I did it already.”

This is one of his favorite lines, a reminder of his 1993 exit after winning three consecutive titles, four finals MVPs and seven scoring championships. As it was that summer, so it will be once more in the not-too-distant future: now you see him, now you don’t.

Once more, despite official league pronouncements, it will be as if someone turned out the lights. Jordan, the player, is as irreplaceable as Jordan, the endorser and actor, is not.

It was never the shoes nor was it the underwear, sports drink, movie, etc. It wasn’t heart-warming moments like last season when he said he wanted a championship for the guys who hadn’t been there like Steve Kerr, or this season when he said he wanted to win for new assistant coach Frank Hamblen. (“Next,” said a Bulls insider, “rings for the homeless.”) It was always the thrill of watching him play basketball.

What higher praise can a player have than the praise of his peers?

Here’s what: Their acknowledgement he never had a peer.

“It’d be sad if this was his last time around,” says Suns Coach Danny Ainge, whose playing career spanned those of Julius Erving, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Jordan.

“He’s got a lot of basketball left in him, if he wants. The game was obviously a lot more exciting when he was here than when he was out playing baseball.

“He’s definitely the all-time player I ever played against, the most exciting, the guy that I got up to play against the most, the guy that challenged you the most. I would hate to see him quit.”

Quitting won’t be easy but it’s not the way it was when Jordan was young and the Bulls were younger, when they’d have to go to Boston Garden and listen to Bird’s mouth before the Celtics drilled them, when Magic would count up his rings--he had five--and ask Jordan how many he had.

Jordan misses Bird and the Celtics. He misses Magic and the Lakers. He almost misses Bill Laimbeer and the Pistons.

“Sure,” Jordan said before a recent game against the winless Suns, “that was fun. That was a sense of motivation, individually. It made you check yourself deep down in your heart. I mean your desire, how bad you wanted it.

“I mean, we don’t have many of those games right now. I’m not saying we won’t get there when we meet New York or the Lakers or Houston or Seattle, those teams.

“But in between, it’s not the same intensity. That’s the real challenge . . . to get up for these games and go out and play the type of basketball you need to play to win.

“It’s like--we weren’t as bad as Phoenix in this situation but it’s kind of similar where you don’t have anything to lose, you can go out and play your best because you’re not expected to win but then you have everything to gain, a sense of respect from the other team after you beat them.”

He has long since gained his respect. Now he’s in the Bird-Magic role, deciding whom to confer it on. There’s not even much of a challenge, staying awake long enough to polish off small fry. The Bulls, 86-10 since their ’95 opener, have proven they can do that too.

These days the challenge is finding a challenge.

*

Of course, there is the question of how he’s going to live the rest of his life.

Since Jordan won his first title in 1991, he has been trying to balance fame and fortune, which he likes, with loss of privacy, which he doesn’t.

Too much of the former, as in 1993 when his gambling habits made headlines, could send him scooting into retirement. Too little of the latter could propel him into baseball, as it did in 1994, or back to the NBA, as it did in 1995.

In his second basketball career, Jordan’s foibles are largely ignored--with Dennis Rodman around, who notices?--by a public that seems grateful to see him playing basketball again. Last season was an idyll in which he proved “critics” (SportsCenter anchors, et. al.) wrong, won a fourth championship, a fourth MVP, an eighth scoring title, a fourth finals MVP, a seventh all-defense first-team selection and led the Bulls to a record 72 victories.

But idyllic or not, NBA seasons are draining and those of the quarrelsome, hysteria-wrapped Bulls odysseys. Last fall Jordan mused about three more seasons. By spring he was talking two. In the summer he signed for one.

His off-season turned into another financial harvest that had him asking himself what he’d gotten himself into. Warner Bros. wanted him so badly for Space Jam, the studio gave agent David Falk an “executive producer” credit and Jordan, according to the financial press, 10% of the merchandising take, now projected in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The movie just opened No. 1 at the box office, meaning Jordan and Warner Bros. couldn’t make more money from this project if they printed it in the basement.

But then there was the “press junket.” This is something movie stars do but when Jordan heard Mel Brooks once knocked off 80 separate interviews in a two-day junket, he decided then and there he’d had enough of show business.

“Each year,” Jordan says, wearily, “you say, well, I’m going to control this, I’m going to control that. Then next year you’re right back in the same situation . . . .

“That’s where my life is right now and it has been for awhile. I’m always constantly worried about, what do I have to do tomorrow or the next minute or the next hour? I don’t know when that’s ever going to happen to me, where I don’t have to be at an appearance here or an appearance there. I have very little time, two weeks out of the summer, where I can say I don’t have to do anything but get up and do whatever I choose to do.

“Two weeks. This summer was the worst.”

Jordan looks happy again. The Bulls look unbeatable, meaning he probably can’t imagine leaving but it’s early and so many things have to go right: they have to win a title, which would mean a contract for Coach Phil Jackson and another season in Chicago for Scottie Pippen whose deal runs out in ’98.

Just to be on the safe side, wherever Jordan goes, he looks around as if it were his last trip in.

In America West, he remembered Jim Paxson’s ’93 finals-winner. In Boston’s antiseptic FleetCenter, he mourned the old Garden. In New York where his eyes are always alight, where he has had some of his biggest games like the 55-pointer in his ’95 comeback, they had better run and hide.

“You know what?” Jordan asks, “it’s an enjoyable feeling because I tend to smile and enjoy and reminisce. It’s not saying that I won’t come back and go through the whole process again but at least for now I enjoy it.”

Meanwhile, fans and players alike look back at him.

“I think a lot about this possibly being the final season of the Bulls,” Kerr says. “Who knows what’s going to happen next year? Hopefully, it will go on but I’m gonna make sure I enjoy this while it’s going on . . .

“I think you get numbed to his moves, some of the acrobatics. You see it every day in practice. You get numb to that a little bit. He’ll make a move and the whole crowd will go crazy--I’ve seen it. But what never gets old is watching how he can take over a game with his competitiveness. That never ceases to amaze me.”

One day, perhaps not too far off, the announcement which Jordan has already composed will come from Falk’s office--”I’m gone”--amazing everyone one last time.

Then, unless the game is very lucky, indeed, they’ll be a long time looking for his replacement.