Word: alie
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...play-offs overwhelmed the opposition by sheer force of spirit. Last week his halftime speech to his team in Game 3 against Utah was, "Let's bury these guys and make them think about it." They routed the Jazz by 42 points. Without the benefit of a rival (imagine Ali without Frazier, Navratilova without Evert) and without innovating the game (Dr. J had already defined the dunk), Jordan became the greatest player of all time through intensity and hypercompetitiveness. Nets center Jayson Williams says that when he faces Jordan, his plan is never to look in his eyes...
Should he quit, he cannot expect to lead the normal life he says he wants. On account of the ever growing hunger of the media, he has less chance than Muhammad Ali of taking his wife and three kids to the mall he keeps saying he longs to stroll. Because even in countries that don't have basketball courts (which, come to think of it, probably don't have malls), he's the man. Photographers traveling in Asia and Eastern Europe have used photos of him as currency. And in some countries, Americans are sometimes greeted by locals...
...greatest basketball player but the greatest athlete: a figure who not only dominates his sport but also changes the way it's played, who dominates that sport not only in his own time but also across time? Where does Jordan stand relative to Babe Ruth, say, or Muhammad Ali...
...Ali? Among those in individual sports, his record is without peer, as was his combination of talents: size, speed, power, guile and the colossal heart that vanquished the great Joe Frazier. But Ali suffers from the converse of the Ruth argument: by the time Ali came along, the best athletes had been siphoned off by team sports. Ali was a giant, but most of his opponents were relative dwarfs...
That's all the marketers need to hear. Notes Charlotte's Wheeler, who has seen all of NASCAR's 50 years: "He's got the potential of doing what athletes like Palmer and Ali, Joe Namath and Babe Ruth and DiMaggio did, and that is to transcend the sport they're in." At 200 m.p.h., that may be especially easy...