25 years ago: Michael Jordan’s Wizards comeback begins with 19 points and a 93-91 loss at Madison Square Garden

Twenty-five years ago this month, Michael Jordan came back one more time. On Tuesday, October 30, 2001, at 38 years and 255 days old, he walked onto the floor at Madison Square Garden in a Washington Wizards uniform for the season opener against the New York Knicks. It was his first regular-season game in 1,234 days, since the jumper over Utah that won the Chicago Bulls their sixth championship on June 14, 1998.

He scored 19 points. The Wizards lost, 93-91. And with the game there to be tied in the final 30 seconds, the most famous closer in basketball threw away a pass and then left a 3-pointer short off the front rim.

It was not the ending anybody had scripted, but it was an honest preview of the two seasons that followed.

How he got there

Jordan had joined the Wizards in January 2000 as president of basketball operations and a part-owner. By the summer of 2001 he was working out seriously, and on September 25, two weeks after the September 11 attacks, he made it official: he would sign a two-year contract to play for Washington, give up his ownership stake and front-office job as league rules required, and donate his entire first-year salary, $1 million, to relief and victim-assistance efforts.

“Although I am energized by my impending return to the court, I am deeply saddened by the recent tragic events and my heart goes out to the victims and their families,” Jordan said in the statement announcing his return.

The schedule had already placed Washington’s opener at the Garden, the building where Jordan scored 55 points in his fifth game back from his first retirement, in March 1995. “This is called the Mecca of basketball, so this is probably the best place to try to do it,” he said at the morning shootaround. Spike Lee auctioned off the seat next to his courtside spot for $101,300 for a firefighters’ relief fund. A few miles away, the Yankees were hosting Game 3 of the World Series.

The box score

• Final, Tuesday, October 30, 2001: Knicks 93, Wizards 91 at Madison Square Garden, attendance 19,763. The season opener for both teams.
• Michael Jordan: 19 points (7-21 FG, 0-3 3P, 5-6 FT), 5 rebounds, 6 assists, 4 steals and 3 turnovers in 36:42 as a starter at small forward. His four steals and six assists both led Washington.
• By quarter: Washington 21-22-18-30; New York 19-22-26-26. The Wizards led 43-41 at halftime, the Knicks won the third quarter by eight and led 67-61 going into the fourth.
• Knicks: Latrell Sprewell scored a game-high 28, Allan Houston added 22, Kurt Thomas had 14 on 6-of-8 shooting, Othella Harrington grabbed 12 rebounds and Mark Jackson handed out 8 assists.
• Wizards: Chris Whitney scored 18 off the bench with four 3-pointers, Richard Hamilton and Popeye Jones had 13 each and Christian Laettner scored 10.
• Also debuting: Kwame Brown, the No. 1 pick in the 2001 draft, played 11:51 and finished with 2 points, 3 rebounds and 3 blocks.

The numbers on October 30 were very human. He made one of his seven baskets going to the rim. Washington was minus-9 in his 36:42 and plus-7 in the 11 minutes and 18 seconds he sat.

Part of that was the new defensive rules the NBA introduced that season, which allowed zone defenses for the first time. Whenever Jordan caught the ball in the post, New York sent a second defender, and sometimes a third, daring Washington’s young players to beat them. Jeff Van Gundy had said before the game that he was not interested in a celebration. “No matter how much everyone wants this to be a coronation, I want it to be a win,” the Knicks coach said.

Washington still had a chance at the end. Down three in the final 20 seconds, Jordan got an open 3-pointer from the right side and missed. Thomas made two free throws to push the lead to five, and the Wizards’ last points only made the final margin two.

“When that three went up, I thought it was in,” Van Gundy said afterward. Sprewell explained the plan more bluntly. “We definitely forced their team to have guys make the plays other than Michael,” he said.

Jordan, in a green suit after the game, kept it short. “I’m a little older. The game is a little different. My teammates are a little different,” he said. “Obviously, the outcome tonight was a little different than what I wanted.” He also pointed out the trade-off that came with the extra attention: “You’re still a threat at 38 if they’re going to double and triple-team you.”

Doug Collins, his coach in Chicago in the 1980s and now in Washington, noted that a sore knee had kept Jordan out of practice since the last exhibition game. “Now, if he makes three more shots, you’d say, ‘Wow, what a great game!'” Collins said.

There was a familiar echo in the line. When Jordan returned from baseball on March 19, 1995, he also scored 19 points, on 7-of-28 shooting, in an overtime loss at Indiana.

What the comeback became

The doubts lasted about two months. Jordan scored 31 in the second game at Atlanta, and by late December he was producing nights that looked like the old ones. Two days after a 6-point night at Indiana ended his record streak of 866 straight double-digit games, he scored 51 against Charlotte on December 29. He followed it with 45 against New Jersey two nights later.

On this day in 2001… Michael Jordan put on a jump-shooting clinic en route to scoring 51 points for the @WashWizards! #NBAVault #NBA75 pic.twitter.com/1LOiQRwITw

— NBA History (@NBAHistory) December 29, 2021

He made the All-Star team and averaged 22.9 points in 60 games, and he even received MVP votes. But his right knee gave out in February. He missed 12 straight games after surgery late that month, came back off the bench, and played his last game of the season on April 2. Washington went 30-30 when he played and 7-15 when he did not, finishing 37-45 and out of the playoffs after a 19-63 season the year before.

In 2002-03, at 39, he played all 82 games, averaged 20.0 points and made his final All-Star team. Four days after turning 40, he scored 43 against the Nets. The Wizards went 37-45 again. His last home game came on April 14, 2003, against the Knicks, the team he had started the comeback against, and his last game was two nights later in Philadelphia, where he scored 15. A few weeks after the season, Wizards owner Abe Pollin removed him from the front office he had hoped to return to.

Jordan finished his Washington years with 3,015 points in 142 games, an average of 21.2. Those games took his career totals to 32,292 points in 1,072 regular-season games, with a 30.1 average that still stands as the highest in NBA history.

The Wizards chapter is usually told as a footnote, the part after the perfect ending in Utah. But it started on a Tuesday night in New York, seven weeks after the attacks, with the Garden full and the greatest player of his time walking out at 38 to see if he still could. He scored 19, missed the shot that could have tied it, and came back two nights later for more.