For many, the lasting image of the end of Michael Jordan’s storied career is of him shaking off Utah Jazz forward Bryan Russell, then rising and sinking a game winning and championship clinching jumper in Game Six of the 1998 NBA Finals.
And if things had ended just that way, it would have made for a great storybook ending. But, as we know, that book had another chapter.
And that story ended, not with Jordan majestically riding off into the sunset with his sixth title as a Chicago Bull, but coming out of retirement. In his last season, he came off the bench for the sad sack Washington Wizards in 2002, looking like a shell of what he had once been.
This all came to mind a few weeks ago, when word leaked out that Michael Phelps was pondering a return to swimming after getting out of the pool “for good” two years ago at the end of the Summer Olympics.
In London, Phelps capped what some considered the most dominant run of any athlete ever, winning four golds and two silvers.
That followed an otherworldly performance four years prior in Beijing, where Phelps torched the pool for eight gold medals. He surpassed the seven golds that Mark Spitz won in Munich in 1972, the previous record for most individual medals in an Olympics, regardless of the sport.
To wit, the Baltimore native won 18 Olympic gold medals and 22 overall in a dazzling 12-year burst, going back to his first appearance as a 15-year-old in Sydney in 2000.
Through earnings from his pool endeavors and from endorsements, Phelps had all the fame and fortune anyone could want. Understandably, he didn’t want to get up at ungodly hours to do ungodly numbers of laps in a cold pool nearly every day.
But that, apparently, was the 27-year-old Michael Phelps. The Michael Phelps who will be 29 next month, perhaps got tired of hanging out at Ravens practices or opening sub shops.
He faced the quandary that millions of retirees face just after they leave the workforce: namely what to do with that part of their lives.
In Phelps’ case, however, there are no grandchildren to bounce off his knee, and he probably is looking for something more competitively challenging than a weekly Mah Jongg or canasta game. So, after pledging that he would not swim into his 30s, Phelps has embarked on a path that should lead to him swimming in Rio in the 2016 Summer Olympics.
The early results on his comeback are mixed, as Phelps finished second to his friendly rival, Ryan Lochte, in a meet last month in Arizona. But he won his signature event, the 100 meter butterfly, over the weekend in Charlotte.
If Phelps is worried about tarnishing his legacy, he isn’t letting on. At the Arizona competition, Phelps said (via ESPN):
If I don't become as successful as you all think I would be or should be, and you think it tarnishes my career, that's your opinion. I'm doing this because I want to come back and I enjoy being in the pool and I enjoy being in the sport of swimming. I'm having fun with what I'm doing.
Sounds as if the swimmer is all right being like Mike. Phelps, that is.
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