Bill Simmons on MJ

[Derek Bodner]

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...=simmons/060220

And when I returned, the cards emerged, just as I predicted -- they started playing a game called "Bid Wist," a form of spades that's popular among NBA players, with Oakley and MJ teaming up against two of their friends. We got to see MJ's legendary competitive streak in action. He was trash-talking nonstop, snickering sarcastically, cackling with every good card, badgering his opponents to the point where I actually thought one of them would start crying. This wasn't Corporate MJ, the one you and I know. This was Urban MJ, the one that comes out for the black Super Bowl. We never get to see this one.

And I'm sitting there dying. For one thing, I love cards and have a gambling problem. Also, what would be a greater story than Sully and I getting winners against Oak and MJ? Sure, there wasn't a chance in hell, but it was fun to imagine. Meanwhile, the day kept getting stranger and stranger. Around 6, Shaquille O'Neal showed up with his posse, wearing a four-piece suit that caused MJ to joke, "I'm glad you're living up to the responsibility of the dress code." A little bit later, Bucks assistant Lester Conner showed up wearing a red sweatshirt with a giant Jordan logo on it .... when do you run into someone when you're randomly wearing their clothes? And MJ kept getting louder and louder, and him and Oakley were cleaning up, and we're all watching them while pretending not to watch, and then suddenly ...

MJ's wife shows up. Uh-oh.

Everyone makes room for her. She sneaks in and sits down right next to him. And poor MJ looks like somebody who took a no-hitter into the ninth, then gave up a triple off the left-field wall. The trash-talking stops. He slumps in his seat like a little kid. The cigar goes out. No more hangin' with the boys. Time to be a husband again. Watching the whole thing unfold, I lean over to Sully just to say, "Look at that, he's just like us."

And he was. Just your average guy getting derailed by his wife. For once in my life, I didn't want to be like Mike.

Also of note:

The Frozen Envelope Award for "Biggest scandal directly involving the Knicks"
You know how you're guaranteed an Oscar if you lose or gain a ton of weight or play a special needs character? Well, if you're short or female, your odds of winning a dunk contest increase exponentially. For instance, Nate Robinson won Saturday's contest even though it took him roughly 75 times to complete two of his dunks. This went well beyond "It's time for the Birdman to fly" territory, or even feel-good "Costner in 'Tin Cup'" territory; Nate's complete disregard for the fans was almost overwhelming. I mean, we were sitting there for like 10 minutes watching him try dunks with a 2.5-percent probability of succeeding. I don't know how it played on TV, but in person? Excruciating.

Of course, when Nate ended up winning over the far superior Andre Iguodala, that's when it surpassed the Wilkins-Jordan contest in '87 as the all-time Dunk Contest Travesty That Will Never Be Topped. Nobody even had the energy to boo because Nate had already ruined our collective will to live; we ended up hightailing like people fleeing a murder scene. Even more tragically, the grisly ending overshadowed two of the greatest dunks ever -- Robinson's scaling Spud Webb (he was available), and Iguodala's incredible other-side-of-the-backboard dunk, which was, unequivocally, the best dunk I've ever seen in person. (It nearly caused a riot -- for a second, I thought the players on hand were going to charge the floor, almost like a delirious college hoops crowd after a buzzer-beating basket.) No matter how contrived the dunk contest is, or how fixed it is, few in-person sports moments compare with someone's bringing the house down in a dunk contest. That still ranks right up there.

(And while we're here, kudos to the NBA for figuring out how to get stars such as Nash, LeBron, Wade, Kobe and Nowitzki involved on Saturday night, as well as how to move the night along much more efficiently. Sure, they refuse to try H-O-R-S-E, the High Dunk or Half-Court Shot Contest, and they continue to shove the WNBA players down our throats ... but at least we weren't there for four hours, and at least it felt like there was some star power there, even if the ending made us feel like we were walking out of a snuff film. Still, a decent night all around.)