When Nothing Else Matters : Michael Jordan's Last Comeback

Allen St. John

At its best, When Nothing Else Matters is the fourth act of a Shakespeare play, the one where the hero's tragic flaws are revealed. And during his comeback, Jordan is Macbeth in high-tops, with the same drive that made him a legend now undermining him as he struggles to ignore a chronic knee injury that ultimately would end his season … When Nothing Else Matters tells the gripping tale of an aging superstar moving reluctantly from the one place where he was in complete control to a world where the rules weren't as clear-cut.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

After serving as president and part owner of the Washington Wizards for two years, Jordan, bored by his executive duties and frustrated by the team's poor play, returned to the court in 2001 in a bid to revitalize the struggling basketball franchise. But the aging superstar's attempt to resurrect the team flopped as the Wizards failed to make the playoffs in either of Jordan's two playing seasons. While the highs and lows of Jordan's comeback are known to most basketball fans, Leahy, a Washington Post feature writer who covered Jordan's return, offers an in-depth look at the inner turmoil that plagued the Jordan-led Wizards. In a smartly written, often angry work that is as much a sports story as a psychology study and condemnation of the media that built up the Jordan myth, Leahy not only documents Jordan's performance on the floor, but examines what motivated him to play despite serious knee problems. Leahy also deals with the role sportswriters (he makes it clear he isn't one) play in building America's athletes into godlike characters, a practice he abhors. Leahy has no use for idol worship and casts all three of the book's main figures-Jordan, coach Doug Collins and majority owner Abe Pollin-in unfavorable lights. This engaging read is marred by one flaw: Leahy's tendency to insert himself into the story. Agent, David Black. (Nov.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Michael Jordan is unquestionably one of the National Basketball Association's greatest all-time stars. During his career, he dominated the game, leading the Chicago Bulls to six championships. In 1999, Jordan retired (for the second time) from playing professional basketball to assume an administration position with the NBA's Washington Wizards. In 2001, at age 38, he returned to the court as a player. Leahy, a staff writer with the Washington Post newspaper and magazine, offers an entertaining first book that aptly describes Jordan's return to the sport, a venture that was, according to the author, as spectacular as it was disastrous. The author details the many challenges Jordan faced, from injuries and younger players to a bruised ego and a pride that interfered with executive decisions. Although the book is, overall, not a flattering portrayal of Jordan, fans will want to read this. Buy where demand warrants. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/04.]-Larry R. Little, Penticton P.L., B.C. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Washington Post reporter Leahy sees the legendary player's sad return to professional basketball as a parable of all that is wrong with an industry that milks players of iconic status. In 2000, the Washington Wizards hired Michael Jordan to be the club's president. Surprise, surprise, writes Leahy: the move was made to capitalize on Jordan's star power; principal owner Abe Pollin hoped to bolster the Wizards' poor performance and, more importantly, to fill seats in the arena. Detailed by the Post to follow this story over the course of a year, the skeptical but evenhanded reporter chronicles Jordan's abortive resurrection and explains what it was all about-essentially, money and entitlement. For the year and a half that Jordan served as a Wizards executive, he was at best an absentee landlord; later, as a player, he displayed the diminishing talents of someone kissing 40: knees in tatters, wrists twisted by tendonitis, loss of cool. Leahy is not out to do a hatchet job, but he won't pretend to be impressed by the emperor's new clothes. He will call Jordan for presumptuousness and uncourtly behavior, for dismissiveness and slighting of fellow players, for bad work habits and general ham-fistedness. He will cut the star a little slack for being a child of the bubble, riding high on his earnings and the absurd media grovelings (degrading evidence of journalists' complicity in making a god out of someone who plays a game), protected to a fare-thee-well. But he will then cut Jordan down to size-a mere six feet, say-for arrogance and "how helpless he seemed to be against the pull of his appetites." The point is that havoc trails upon sport stardom, and Leahy makes it more than well. Theself-immolating trajectory of a display of hubris worthy of Aristophanes' contempt, complete with the inevitable fall from grace. Agent: David Black

From the Publisher

Michael Sokolove author of The Ticket Out: Darryl Strawberry and the Boys of Crenshaw Leahy is that most unwelcome of characters around a pro sports team: a truth-teller. Where others were intimidated by Michael Jordan or just plain blinded by his star power, Leahy stood his ground and assembled a tough-minded, fair, and gripping account that reveals something far more interesting than Michael Jordan the icon — he gives us Jordan, the man.

Glenn Stout series editor of The Best American Sports Writing Michael Leahy may be the first author to overcome his awe of Michael Jordan and let us see another Jordan, the legend in the autumn of his career. In this book we don't just meet a myth streaking across the sky — we meet a very human being finally returning to earth. When Nothing Else Matters transcends its subject, for as we watch Jordan descend, we also somehow see ourselves.

Stephanie Davis, GQ, November '04 No one's covered Michael Jordan like Michael Leahy. In 2001, Leahy a staff writer for The Washington Post, was assigned to write about the legend's return to basketball with the Washington Wizards and nearly everything he did off court as well. (At one point, Wizard coach Doug Collins refers to Leahy as a "stalker.") This obsessive reportage resulted in an acclaimed series for the Post and is now a book, When Nothing Else Matters: Michael Jordan's Last Comeback (Simon & Schuster) — easily the most fully formed portrait of Jordan ever written and one of the best sports books in recent memory.

If you know Jordan from those "Be Like Mike" Gatorade commercials, you are unlikely to recognize the petulant protagonist of When Nothing Else Matters. Leahy discovers an ailing star on the downward arc of his career — "moving like a sea captain with a wooden peg for a right leg," he writes at one point. As he declines, Jordan claws at everyone around — teammates (he calls one teammate a "faggot"), the competition (he lusts to destroy challengers like Kobe Bryant), and most of all, his employer (Wizards owner Abe Pollin). But this Jordan seldom makes the papers, because the sports media are so beholden to Earth's Most Beloved Star they dare not risk alienating him. "Around Jordan power flowed one way," Leahy writes. "Reporters were sharecroppers: They tilled him only at his pleasure."

There's plenty of gossip in When Nothing Matters — Leahy doesn't hold back on the tales of Jordan's gambling and infidelities, and David Stern will enjoy the story of the NBA referee who allegedly set Jordan up with a girl — but in the end, this is a far more melancholy than tawdry tale. Michael Jordan was undoubtedly the greatest basketball player of his time. It's just a shame it took us so long to find out he was a human being too.