Rumour hath it that in remote areas of the world like the Arctic and the Amazon, journeymen are earning their boarding by simply flashing Jordan's picture. In parts of deepest Africa and the Far East, where no English is spoken, the only words understood are `Michael Jordan'. Fortune magazine has estimated that he has added $10 billion to the US economy. A line of cologne he introduced last year has already outsold all others. Sportswriters, columnists and essayists have already anointed him the greatest sportsman of all time. A search for articles relating to him on any online database turns out more than 100 pieces a day. He has been venerated, deified, worshipped, consecrated and canonised. Everything that can possibly written about him has been and more. `We should be sick of Michael Jordan,' was the opening line of a Time magazine cover story on HisAirness last week.

But no, we aren't. Last fortnight, as the world's greatest basketballer, and indeed athlete, turned out another signature performance in his storied career to win a sixth basketball title for his team Chicago Bulls, millions of fans across the world wept at the possibility that they'd seen the last of Jordan on the court. Jordan has announced that he will not play for Bulls under any coach other than the hemp-smoking Zen master Phil Jackson. And Jackson, who is at odds with the Bulls management, announced his exit after the title win and rode off into the sunset on his Harley Davidson. Jordan has gone away post-season to Canada for a holiday. There is hysteria among sports fans and the media in the US and many parts of the world. Suddenly the NBA, which has only recently spread the tentacles of basketball world-wide through ESPN, looks doomed. In the two years Jordan broke off from the league in 1993 and 1994, viewership fell by 30 per cent and revenues collapsed. We should be sick ofMichael Jordan?

Of course, Time's teaser lead was more in jest. Can you ever get sick of watching the Bolshoi? Or listening to Mozart? Or reading Shakespeare? The pinnacle of human endeavours and achievement are only to be admired and enjoyed over and over again. Jordan personified greatness. It did not matter if you were not knowledgeable about basketball, much less a fan or a cognoscenti. No one who ever saw the man in action could fail to be impressed by his strength and grace, his speed and skill, his pride and intelligence. Each of these qualities were enshrined in that one definitive moment in the NBA final. And therein lies a story behind Time's cover story.

In basketball circles, Jordan is known as the man who wins games for his team. Typically, his score will be 30 to 35 points per game, about 40 to 50 per cent of his team score. Imagine Sachin Tendulkar scoring half of India's total each time he goes out to bat. But Jordan's greatness is not just in his scores, but his ability to win games fromdifficult positions, under seemingly impossible circumstances, against overwhelming odds. Thus, on a visit to Washington last year, he hit 17 consecutive points in seven minutes to help Bulls to a last gasp win against the Washington Bullets, as if to twit a local fan called Bill Clinton who had turned up for the game.

Usually, in the fourth quarter of the intense 48-minute game, the Bulls turn to Jordan to lead them to victory. Invariably, they trust him with the last shot in a close game with seconds, sometimes a fraction of a second, remaining. It's rare that he fails them.

On that Wednesday, the Bulls were down 86-87 with less than 20 seconds remaining when Jordan turned on his familiar magic. Everything appeared to be in slow motion as Jordan did only what Jordan can. Stall a rival attack, steal a ball, and hit a winning jumper with the clock winding down to zero. A million fans held their breath at that singular champion act (as if they had not seen it before), none more so than Time's ManagingEditor Walter Isaacson who had put Jordan on the magazine cover for the forthcoming issue.

Jordan obliged. Here's how the next day's Washington Post reported the story on page one: `If it's the last time, it's also the sweetest. One more time, for the ages, for the highlight videos and the pages of sports history, Michael Jordan carried his team, made the critical defensive play, hit the game-winning shot. My goodness. It's the only ending you can imagine writing for Jordan.'

No one who saw Jordan as a stripling in North Carolina could predict such greatness for him. In fact, he was said to be so ordinary in his early days that he was dropped from the college basketball team (Jordan has forever held that coach in high esteem for teaching him the basic lesson you've to work ever harder to get there). By modern basketball standards he is of modest build, only six feet six inches and about 215 pounds, when some of those he plays against weigh in at 300 pounds and seven feet plus. But Jordan's forte is hisspeed, agility, natural athletic ability and most of all, high intelligence and motivation. His peers say he has the uncanny ability to judge the tempo of the game and seize the initiative at just the right moment.

His combativeness, even at age 35, is legendary. Once, when he returned to basketball after an 18-month break he was bored after winning three titles and had retired to play baseball rival Shaquille O'Neal, a 7'4' behemoth, sneered at a rusty Jordan after a poor first game. `Looks like 45, ain't as good as 23,' O'Neal said, referring to Jordan's jersey number which he has changed from 23 to 45. In the next game on O'Neal's home court, Jordan sank exactly 45 points, winked deliciously at O'Neal and left. Basketball aficionados are full of such incredible stories. Another story goes that early in his career, a Dallas Morning Herald sportswriter rubbished Jordan's effort to be a great defensive player saying it was impossible in basketball to be a great attacking player (which Jordan was alreadyuniversally acknowledged to be) and a defender since it consumed too much energy. In 1987-88, Jordan won both titles and he never let the journalist forget what he wrote.

Small wonder his story motivated one of the truly inspirational songs of our times -- I believe i can fly which appeared on the soundtrack of the movie Space Jam. Jordan is admired not just as a sportsman and an athlete. Across the sporting world, his character and class has elevated him to the level of a great human being. Elegant, confident and modest, he embodies a quality rarely associated with sportsmen -- nobility.