Jordan No Longer Holds Us Spellbound

Personally, I prefer Charles Barkley, but there was little Dorothy on the TBS NBA pregame show, informing co-hosts the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion to come along, “We’re off to see the Wizard!”

Weren’t we all?

Wasn’t “Super Tuesday,” as ESPN over-hyped it, going to be the night Michael Jordan made his comeback for the Washington Wizards, took on the New York Knicks and the New York Yankees and Fox and Roger Clemens and dusted every single one of them?

Ahem.

Here’s the final stat sheet:

Jordan against the Knicks: 21 field goals attempted, 14 field goals missed, 19 points, Wizards lose by a basket.

Jordan on TBS: 3.3 national cable rating, seen in 2.9 million homes.

World Series Game 3 on Fox: 15.4 national rating, seen in 16.2 million homes.

Remember when Jordan was the most formidable defensive stopper in the world?

Tuesday, he couldn’t even slow down Fox’s Attention Deficit Syndrome approach to the World Series.

The 15.4 rating for the Yankees’ 2-1 victory over Arizona was a 24% improvement over last year’s Game 3 rating of 12.4 for the Yankees and the Mets. It was also an improvement over the 15.0 rating Fox drew for its Game 2 telecast Sunday night, which went unopposed by the Wizard.

And this was with every Fox viewer being pummeled with subliminal change-the-channel advertising throughout the baseball game. Every time a play was made in center field, the camera caught the ad on the Yankee Stadium fence: “THE WIZ.” Sorry, we’re staying with the Rocket.

Remember when Jordan could outperform every other guard in the NBA on any night in any season?

Tuesday, his comeback didn’t amount to half of Magic Johnson’s 1996 comeback. The second game of Magic’s Laker return in ’96 drew a 7.1 rating on TBS, the cable network’s all-time best number for an NBA telecast.

So what happened?

First off, the odds were seriously stacked against Jordan on all fronts. The World Series was on a major network, Jordan was on cable. The Knicks had Latrell Sprewell and Allan Houston combining for 50 points, Jordan had Popeye Jones and Jahidi White dropping his passes.

Second, TBS’ “Wizard of Oz” imagery didn’t foreshadow the entire story.

The Scarecrow didn’t have a brain.

The Tin Man didn’t have a heart.

The Wizard didn’t have a jump shot.

(Although it should be noted: TBS did air footage from the movie showing Dorothy shuddering as the tornado swept the house over her head, which should have been the tipoff for Wizard-Knick viewers: Bricks coming, look out below.)

Third, TBS, along with most of the U.S. sporting media, raised expectations so high, even the fly-from-the-foul-line Jordan of a decade ago couldn’t approach them.

TBS did the 38-year-old Jordan no favors by larding its pregame show with “Classic Jordan” highlights--all of the greatest hits, jams, slams, spins and jumpers from yesteryear.

You know, he really was something to watch.

Rule One of sports TV: When your pregame show is more interesting than your game, you have problems. Jordan, literally, was competing against himself on Tuesday’s telecast.

You see those spectacular moves from the early ‘90s and you shake your head. Then the game starts and you see a heavier, slower, landlocked Jordan missing layups, missing open jumpers, not even nearing dunk altitude and you say, “How about some more of those highlights from the early ‘90s?”

Barkley, Jordan’s good friend, was sad to predict it would be like this.

Before the game, Barkley said Jordan wouldn’t outscore Sprewell, wouldn’t win this game, wouldn’t make the playoffs with this team and hoped Jordan wouldn’t get hurt.

He was right on the first two, probably right on the third, and got his way on the fourth--although Jordan still has 81 potential snapped tendons to go.

“I get no joy,” Barkley said after the game about making such accurate predictions. “I want Michael to do well. I don’t care about this reporter [stuff], but as a friend, I want him to do well. ... I thought he did pretty good [against the Knicks].

“That’s the way it’s going to be all season. He’s going to have some really great games and some mediocre games.

“Because, if you noticed, he’s a jump shooter now. And if he’s the best jump shooter in the world, he’s going to shoot close to 50%. So some nights he’s going to have 30, 35, when his jumper’s going. But most nights he’s going to have right around 20ish, because that’s what he is. He’s a jump shooter.”

Lots of jump shooters in this country. Nothing special about one who’s no better than one out of every three.

The Jordan we remember was special, always giving us a reason to tune in.

The Jordan we saw Tuesday was just another good player on a very bad team. He wasn’t good enough to lead off “SportsCenter”--the World Series beat him there too--and when Stuart Scott and Jack Ramsey got their chance to break down Jordan’s performance, Dr. Jack slowed down the tape, isolated Jordan so we could see, close up, the greatest basketball player ever ... set a screen.

Sorry, watching Damian Miller chase the World Series single-game record for dropped pop-ups is more fun than that.

Barkley was talking about the Wizards, but he could have been referring to TBS’ ratings hopes when he said of Jordan, “He’s got to carry a lot of weight. A lot of weight. And he’s 38 years old. He can’t carry a lot of weight.”