15 Years Later: Remembering Jordan's Final Flight Out of Chicago

CLEVELAND - With a face filled with tears, I watched on television as the greatest basketball player in history walked away from the game that made him an international icon. This same exact event had also taken place nearly five and a half years before (he returned to pro hoops 17 months later) and both times, it was simply too much to bear.

Michael Jordan was retiring.

Today marks the 15th anniversary of Jordan's historic press conference which announced this horrible decision. At the time, the NBA had just resolved a contentious lockout which wiped out the first two months of the 1998-99 season. What resulted was a truncated, laughable 50-game schedule that featured a heavily dismantled Chicago Bulls team, who were the three-time defending champions for the second time in the decade, with MJ leading the way every time.

The lockout was finally lifted on Jan. 7, and tons of rumors had been swirling about the fate of Jordan as a player, since he had repeatedly mentioned the season before that he was strongly considering retirement. Then, on January 13, 1999, MJ showed up in a black suit with his wife to the United Center in Chicago to declare that, just one month from his 36th birthday, he was done with NBA hoops as its pre-eminent star.

This shook me to my core, and it sent the league into a tailspin of unparalleled parity. Almost immediately, the Bulls' two other star players, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman were gone too. This left the team with Toni Kukoc as its best player and they stumbled to a putrid 13-37 record.

Yuck.

After having witnessed Jordan, just 7 months prior dominate the final minute of the 1998 NBA Finals, hit the championship winning jumper with 5.2 seconds left and walk off with his 6th NBA title and 6th NBA Finals MVP award, it was especially difficult seeing him leave all of that greatness on the floor once again -- the same way that he had done in the autumn of 1993, just three and a half months after Chicago's first 3-peat.

Jordan stayed retired for a little over two and a half years, then decided to come out of retirement just 5 months before his 39th birthday to play with the horrible Washington Wizards. He had become VP of basketball operations in January 2000, but by October 2001, he was back on the court as a much older version of himself.

But to many people, Jordan's two-year Wizards "experiment" was a mere footnote to a dazzling career that re-defined sports and marketing and made Michael Jordan a filthy rich cultural icon.

I will never forget that sad day in early 1999. Jordan's words felt even colder than they did in his '93 farewell speech, yet somehow...even though I had long known it was a strong possibility he would leave again, I was still shattered by the reality of it.

Looking back with the huge perspective of 15 years, I can appreciate Michael even more than I did then...and that is saying a whole lot because my appreciation for him was always enormous.

I am just happy that I got to witness the great Michael Jordan during his legendary career!