Yesterday, Grantland shared the David Remnick 'Michael Jordan returning from retirement' New Yorker profile, "Back in Play" that was originally published in magazine back in May of 1995. For those not familiar, Remnick is a Pulitzer Award and National Magazine Award winner and has been the Editor-in-Chief of the New Yorker since 1998.If you're looking for a good read this weekend I highly suggest "Back in Play" (and this).
"Jordan had long been a student of the career of Julius Erving — the purposeful flamboyance on the court, the studied grace when dealing with reporters and advertisers — and he did not want to end up as Erving had in his final years, reduced to ordinary standards of play. Jordan's art would know no senescence; our memories would remain pure."
"The Bulls have handed out hundreds of press passes for this game, and everyone's mandate is the same: Get Jordan — Jordan pictures, Jordan quotes. Both the Tribune and the Sun-Times published special pullout sections in the morning; (The Chicago Tribune would put out another special section after the game. With nearly 10 writers to cover the game, stories were spread thin. The on-site editor, Mary Urell, gathered her writers together early in the day and said, jokingly, "Okay, guys: One fact per story." It was almost that bad. "We had so many sidebars," remembers Melissa Isaacson, writing for the Tribune at the time. "It would be like, 'Okay, you'll do 'Michael's first half,' you'll do 'Michael's second half.' One year, he had a foot fungus, so someone would be writing about the foot fungus angle.") the local television stations have been broadcasting live from courtside since late afternoon. The press cannot afford to miss a Jordan sighting."
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