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What's left to say
about Michael Jordan? By William McKeen, Ph.D. © Copyright 1999 William McKeen |
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could there be to say about Michael Jordan and why would David Halberstam
be saying it? After all, Jordan is the best there is and the best sportswriters in the  galaxy
have documented his every move for the last 15 years. Then there's David
Halberstam, genius war correspondent, the dude that President Kennedy
wanted to get fired for questioning American presence in Vietnam, but not
exactly a regular Sports Illustrated contributor.Seems like an odd couple at first, and one of those books that makes you admire the brilliance of Halberstam's literary agent—hammering together a big-bucks deal for some high-priced yammering on His Airness. It almost makes you nostalgic for the early 1970s, when Norman Mailer would be given obscene amounts of money to write Big Books about things he knew nothing about. Ah, but there's the difference. Halberstam does know what he's talking about. He has a reputation as one of the great reporters of the century and author of The Best and the Brightest, required reading if you want to know anything about Vietnam, and The Powers That Be, the same if you want to know anything about Big Media.  But he is also a stone basketball junkie. Years ago, he published The Breaks of the Game, about one year in the life of the NBA. Sprinkled in with his heavy political books and pop histories such as The Fifties, he's published a lot of sports books. So it's not such a weird match after all. But still ... Michael Jordan? What's left to be said? A lot, apparently. And that's not to say merely that Halberstam is a wordy writer—he sure is—but his reporting makes up for whatever his bombastic faults as a prose stylist. Halberstam is unable to write even the simplest story without turning it into an epic. So this isn't just a book about the greatest basketball player of all time ... it's also a book about marketing, race relations and the mass media. Jordan scored in every arena he entered. Playing for Keeps is a lot more than a Maileresque rumination by a famous-writer-on-contract about stuff we already know. Halberstam has amassed enormous amounts of information on American culture in the Jordan years and makes us appreciate the impact he's had on the game. For example, in advertising. Bill Cosby was one of the first African Americans to transcend race to the extent that he could sell any product to Middle America and not have the hurdle the but-he's-black barrier that so many white consumers erect. Jordan did the same, but hundredfold, with Nike and Hanes and Gatorade and Coke and just about any other contract he wanted. Jordan's story is also about bringing the NBA to center court, taking it from the also-ran pro sport in American hearts to the pro sport of the 1990s—certainly with younger fans, who got tired of
Major League Baseball's utter contempt for its audience.Then there is Jordan's game itself. Halberstam tells the tales we've heard before of Jordan's supernatural powers—winning a game in the NBA finals while suffering a deathly bout with the flu, for example—but he tells them with such obvious delight that you don't mind that you've heard it all before. And then, behind all of the glitz and the marketing and the phenomenal achievements, Halberstam gets to the real guy at the heart of the story, and it's a wonderful saga of a loving, close family with a son who had an overwhelming desire to be the best. Of course, Halberstam in his over-the-top way turns the story into a collection of superlatives. But with this story, his prose style is well suited to his tale. The achievements of Michael Jordan are by definition over the top.
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Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and
the World He Made
Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay: An Anthology
Dr. William McKeen is journalism department chairman at the University
of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications. McKeen writes
frequently for The Orlando Sentinel book page and has authored several
books, including: