You should recall that when Michael Jordan stole the ball from Karl Malone at the end of Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, the Bulls, down by one point, did not call time out to set up a play. They had one. Basically, it was called "It's All Over." I was there in Salt Lake City. Phil Jackson was calm on the bench. The crowd was wild. As the Jazz backpedaled on defense and the Bulls spread the floor, John Stockton waved Bryon Russell onto Jordan. What I remember so well is that Russell crouched over and hitched up the bottoms of his white trunks. He was at full alert.

It didn't matter, of course. Jordan threw Russell out of the way and rose up to bury that 18-foot jumper, posing with arm extended -- long enough, it seemed, for sculptors and historians and poets to memorialize the moment. John Wayne never rode off so nobly into a sunset.

The thing is, the sun wasn't going down.

"What perfect ending?" Jordan said to me last April. It was almost three years later, and he was seated behind his president's desk in his Wizards office. "Who said it was a perfect ending?"

Just about everybody.

"If you listened properly for that whole year," he went on, "I said if Phil Jackson would be there, I would keep playing."

And now he's back, even as so many had wanted him to stay on the sidelines, if only to hold on to their own idea of perfection. "There's nothing positive to gain by coming back," says alleged friend Charles Barkley. In a USA Today/Gallup poll taken in late August, only 33% said Jordan should come back. "It's Sad Jordan Can't Get a Life Off the Court," said a Chicago Tribune headline Sept.25. But Jordan had told me several times that ending his career with that final shot was not important to him. He still loves the challenge. He still loves the game. Who are we to say he shouldn't play again?

***

By last April, Jordan's comeback was at the stage of a house that's been scraped and puttied and is almost ready for painting. "I don't know exactly where I am right now," he said, though it was clear he was satisfied with his progress. "I mean, you're only 38 once." What he meant was that he didn't know exactly how 38-year-old bones were supposed to feel. "But look at Stockton and Malone. It's all about pride. Stockton is older than me, and he's still got it."

Jordan had started the process in January, hooking back up with his longtime trainer, Tim Grover, who had a weight room and high-tech training facility on the second level of Hoops the Gym, a basketball facility on Chicago's Randolph Street -- not far from the United Center. Across the narrow parking lot from Hoops stands Jordan's own restaurant, 160 Blue, which made for some convenient and tailor-made meals for His Airness. ...

Jordan's early group of players included old and retired pals like Bill Wennington and Bobby Hansen, and weekend hackers like John Rogers, a rich, six-foot, fortyish Chicago financial baron who played basketball a century or so ago at Princeton. After scrimmages, the guys would sometimes sit around upstairs at Hoops and drink beer. One day, noting Jordan's progress, Hansen said, "Mike, why don't you give David Stern a call?"

"Do you think he wants to hear from me?" Jordan replied.

Jordan himself is a host of contradictions. He's at once cunning and straightforward, savvy and naive, calculating and impetuous. Who else could have so many endorsements, business interests and public connections, and yet always be amazed when the media stalk him the way they do? Jordan gets into things he feels will interest him forever -- baseball, golf, dot.com ventures, management. But soon enough, the itch of serious competition and restlessness overwhelm him, and he's back out on the road, casting behind him expectations, promises and, sometimes, common sense.

"Look, with these new rules coming in, you almost eliminate Allen Iverson and all those scorers," Jordan told me last spring, pumping himself up as he spoke. "Because now Iverson can't get to the hole. Take away his jump shot, what's left?"

How about 12 years' difference in age? But think about it: How cool will it be to see every young gun in the league come out week after week, weapons blazing, trying to shoot down an aging but still nasty Doc Holliday?

And Jordan knows this. As I watched him play at Hoops through the months, adding real NBA refs and better and better players -- guys like Penny Hardaway, Tim Hardaway, Antoine Walker, Michael Finley, Jerry Stackhouse, Quentin Richardson, Jamal Crawford, Juwan Howard, Corey Maggette, Tyson Chandler and, yes, even the shaved-headed blob Barkley -- I could see Jordan filtering everything and finding his place.

I mentioned to him after one session that he seemed to be trying several different roles. Sometimes he was a point guard, going one game without taking a shot, another guarding the smallest man on the floor. One game he posted up, in another he made cuts off picks like a wide receiver, and in another he simply fired only from long range. "You noticed," he said with a grin. "I figure I'll be a small forward if we go with a small lineup. Or if we go with a big lineup, I'll play shooting guard. I feel I have a lot of weapons."

Jordan's basic skills are still flawless. His jump shot is textbook. Time and again he was able to separate from defenders like Finley and Penny and float backward in the air until he drained the shot. But his vertical is pretty much gone. Or rather, it's only a good, functional vertical, not something scary like Kobe's or Vince's. I watched him get a layup blocked by 6'3" vet Kevin Edwards at Hoops. In the old days, Edwards would have found himself posterized. In tough games, he made a fair share of pump fakes, and then up-and-under moves to the bucket. Old man's cunning. Not flight school.

But always noticeable was the fire. One day Walker, who's a solid 6'9", cocky and virtually unstoppable on offense, got into it with Mike. Walker wrapped his arms around Jordan, holding him on defense, grabbing at the ribs that Jordan had broken just a few weeks earlier. More trash was flying than at a windy dump.

"You can't guard me," Jordan hissed. The two players fought over screens and battled through baseline jams. With the next basket determining the winner, Jordan received the ball, dribbled, faked, then leaped into the air. As the ball left his right fingertips -- his cigar-cutter-damaged right index finger now repaired permanently in perfect shooting position -- Jordan said, "Game time."

It was, too.

"Listen," he said while recovering from his broken ribs in July, "I think the Eastern Conference is wide open. Who do you think is gonna win it? I mean, really, who do you think? Orlando, you might say. But you never know. And Miami, all the other teams, they have problems. I like our chances."

Nobody else does, but that's okay.

For the rest of the story, get the October 15 issue of ESPN The Magazine.