His Airness Has Arrived

Those of us who live in the Washington, DC, area know a little something about celebrity. Hollywood stars drop in for Congressional lobbying days, the President swings through town in his motorcade, and we even have the occasional movie or television crew filming footage for later airing.

But the one star almost everyone in the world recognizes is Michael Jordan. Even people who have never seen a basketball game recognize the outline of his slam-dunk on the side of a Nike shoe. So when Air Jordan announced he is now the President of Operations for our struggling Washington Wizards (http://www.nba.com/Wizards/jordan.html), there was a great buzz about town.

As it happened, a sports editor friend of mine had free tickets to the January 19 game between the Wizards and the Dallas Mavericks, and he had promised one to me. I work downtown near the new MCI Center (http://www.mcicenter.com/), and although I'm not a basketball fan, I'm always up for a sporting event. I agreed to go when Jordan's name was just a whispered rumor in the newspapers. But when I arrived at the game, which started just hours after Jordan's press conference, I could feel the excitement.

Representatives of WPGC (95.5 FM), DC's urban contemporary radio station, passed out hot pink "Welcome Michael Jordan" signs to everyone entering the arena. I waited outside for my friend to arrive with the tickets, and every group of fans passing me had Michael on their minds.

"Have you seen him yet?"

"Do you think we'll see him?"

"Did you see the press conference?"

The lovefest continued inside the arena. Every time a trivia question popped up on the Jumbotron screens, the answer was always Michael Jordan. Team reps passed out oversized t-shirts welcoming His Airness to the arena to kids sitting close to the court. The kids danced in the shirts that fell to their knees, and they held up the hot pink signs.

We had great seats in the club level, but we were directly over the owners' box, and could only see the security guards stationed below in the section in front of the box. At one point, the cameras feeding the Jumbotron swung onto Michael, but he was standing far enough back in the box that all they could film was his thighs to his neck.

By halftime, I was a little annoyed. It seemed unfair that this man who was so famous couldn't even be bothered to come out at halftime and wave from the court. I'd seen him plenty of times on TV, but never in real life, and the disembodied partial shot wasn't going to cut it.

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