From the archives: Michael Jordan, Mr. Wonderful once again

This story was originally published in Newsday on March 29, 1995

He had 20 points by the end of the first quarter and the night was made already, no matter how many points Michael Jordan scored, whether the Knicks beat him or not. This was more than Jordan coming back to New York, and Madison Square Garden, and a rivalry with the Knicks he had left behind along with everything else. This was Jordan showing he still is in the business of wonder. Still the captain of that. We finally know Michael Jordan's best move. His best move was coming back to nights like this.

There will be other games for him, and maybe more titles. But wherever he goes from here in his comeback, whatever he does, they will talk about how five games after he came back from baseball, Jordan scored 55 points against the Knicks in the Garden. They will remember the ball in his hands at the end, Jordan shooting the ball and hanging in the air as if riding the night and finally passing the ball off to win the game. They will talk about the time Jordan came back to the Garden and somehow managed to top himself.

If you consider all the circumstances, if you consider Jordan was in spring training with the White Sox three weeks ago, it is one of the great performances in the history of his sport.

Earl Monroe watched Jordan from the front row last night. Better than anyone, Monroe understood the sound the Garden was making every time Jordan made another shot. He had made shots on the same floor, in bigger games than this. He had seen all the great ones come through the Garden for nearly 30 years. And now Monroe smiled.

"It's like he never left," Monroe said quietly in the first half. "It's like he just made two years disappear."

"That's the fun of it," Jordan himself would say later. "Tomorrow you don't know what I might do."

In the first quarter last night, Michael Jordan made jump shots from everywhere. And there was a spin move on the right baseline, when he looked toward the court and then spun away from John Starks, and beat Anthony Bonner, too, and laid the ball in. In his return to the Garden, after nearly two years, he had come out of the blocks making nine of his first 11 shots. He had scored 50 points in a game against the Knicks one time, on the opening night of the season nine years ago. Somehow, in just his fifth game back, he was chasing 50 again at the Garden, in a one-on-one game with his own memory.

The Knicks played beautifully in the first half, even as Jordan got his points. The Garden made a lot of noise about that. But Jordan had taken the room now, every time he took the ball. This was Memorial Day in Chicago Stadium two years ago, when he scored 54 points against the Knicks in the playoffs.

This was Michael Jordan in Game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals, when he scored 35 points in the first half and finally ran past the NBC announcers, one of whom was Magic Johnson. Jordan looked at Magic Johnson, and shrugged his shoulders and put his hands out, and smiled. As if to say, "Sometimes I still amaze myself."

Smiled, and shrugged, at the wonder of it all.

By halftime, he was at 35 points against the Knicks. He had made defenders disappear for years. Now he had made nearly two years away from the NBA disappear. Like he never left, Earl Monroe had said. Like he never left.

"He reminds us of something," NBA commissioner David Stern had said, from his seat in the sixth row. "He reminds us how we want our sports to be. He is back to expanding the possibilities."

"I didn't know I was on my way to 50," Jordan said afterward. "I just knew it was a lot."

In the second quarter, there was a move in the lane when he went up against his old friend Patrick Ewing. Ewing chased him into the lane, the way he has chased him since college, since he was Georgetown and Jordan was North Carolina. Jordan went over Ewing, the ball high over Ewing, and made another shot. He made the Garden come to him, because even though this was still a Knicks crowd, there was no other place for the Garden to go.

With three minutes left in the first half, Jordan got out on the break, with legs that are not supposed to be all the way back, and might not ever come all the way back. He beat Starks down the court. The ball was high in his right hand again when he went into the air. Starks went with him. Jordan stayed up there longer. That also is his business. He brought the ball back down, and shot it. The ball went in. Starks fouled him. Jordan made the foul shot. He had 27 points. He had looked a bit tired at the end of the first quarter. He did not look tired now.

By halftime, he had made 14 shots out of 19. Bernard King had once scored 60 points for the Knicks on Christmas Day. They were already talking about that at the Garden. Because more than any other player we will see, more than any other player in sports, Jordan still expands the possibilities.

"I had low expectations coming into the game," he would say later, and he was the only one in town.

Magic Johnson only used to get one night a year at the Garden, because he played for the Lakers and came from the Western Conference. He would always talk about how important the night was to him, how much he appreciated the basketball fans of New York. "My one night on Broadway," Magic always said. "You got to make the most of your one night on Broadway." Michael was playing the Garden that way now. He was playing it as if this one night was the only one he would get in his life.

He came out in the third quarter, got a jumper from the left side, a short one. He made that. He would score 14 more points in the third quarter, and the Bulls were in the game now, in there big with the Knicks, finally tying the score at the end of the quarter, at 82-all. Jordan really did seem to be getting tired now. How could he not? He was still out of basketball 10 days ago. But he had dragged the Bulls into his night. It was no longer a one-man show. It was all ridiculously exciting at the Garden.

Michael Jordan was back and the Knicks and Bulls were playing a basketball game that had turned into an express train, that fast and that loud. The place felt like the capital of sports. With a bit under four minutes to go, Jordan made a jumper and went over 50 points. With 2:20 left, he made another and got to 53 points and the Bulls led the Knicks, 107-102. There had been such an extraordinary buildup for this game. It had been an occasion with a short fuse, because Jordan had only returned to the Bulls a week ago Sunday in Indianapolis. It was as if the occasion had been building since Jordan retired.

With 25.8 seconds left, Jordan made another jumper over Starks. Fifty-five points. Bulls by a basket, 111-109. With three seconds left, after floating on the night one last time, he fed Bill Wennington, who dunked the ball. The Bulls had 113, the Knicks had 111, Jordan had 55. The surprise is not that Michael Jordan still has these games in him. The surprise is that he ever gave them up.