TWO CHAMPS ARE BACK

By Steve Wulf

The bronze statue in front of Chicago's United Center came to life Friday night. Before his name was announced, before his signature was lasered onto the floor, the Bulls' new shooting guard, No. 45, Michael Jordan, was greeted by a roar of joy that filled every inch of the new arena and lasted a coincidental 45 seconds. Even the members of the Orlando Magic, the best team in the N.B.A., looked awestruck as Jordan took the floor in Chicago for the first time in almost two years. A crowd of 24,247 and a media contingent of 450 were on hand to witness the historic game, and some seats went for as much as $2,000. Everyone was eager to see how the 32-year-old legend would play against the likes of Penny Hardaway and Shaquille O'Neal. Was Jordan the same player whose statue reads, "The best there ever was"?

Some 10 hours later and 200 miles south of Chicago, at least 300 journalists tried to stay warm under a crescent moon as they waited outside the Indiana Youth Center in Plainfield. They came from as far away as Brazil and Germany to watch prisoner No. 922335 emerge after three years of incarceration for rape. The prisoner was Mike Tyson, once the No. 1 heavyweight in the world and a fighter some thought could be the best there ever was. Although everyone there knew he would get out at around 6 a.m., they were eager for a sign that Tyson either was back in the fold of promoter Don King or had embraced Islam through the teaching of a local junior-high school teacher named Muhammad Siddeeq. To borrow two Oscar-nominated titles, it was the Lyin' King vs. the Plainfield Redemption. To a man, the journalists decided that if Tyson's limousine turned left out of the prison, he was headed for the mosque in Plainfield. If it turned right, he was on his way to the airport, a Lear jet and King's clutches.

These two coming-out parties had more in common than just time and place and the first names of the celebrants. Jordan and Tyson carry with them a charisma that can't be explained simply by their abilities. Ruth, Tilden, Palmer, Jim Brown, Ali: those would be their tablemates.

The two champs are very different, of course. Jordan belongs on a pedestal, and Tyson belonged behind bars. But they're not as simple as good guy and bad guy. We tend to overlook Jordan's foibles, e.g. his gambling habits, just as we forget that Tyson was once capable of compassion and erudition. There is little doubt that basketball and boxing can use them, but as a society we may need them even more, as hero and antihero, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, Air and Iron.

In Chicago, Jordan's return has been positively biblical. He has been mentioned in the same breath as Moses (leading the Bulls out of the wilderness), Jesus (second coming) and the prodigal son. In the days before he announced, "I'm back," mothers and fathers would bring their infants to the Berto Center in suburban Deerfield, Illinois, where the Bulls practice, just to see Jordan's red Corvette. And it wasn't just Chicago that was devoted to Michael. When the news of the return of Qiao Dan (pronounced tshoo dun) was announced over loudspeakers at an army basketball game in Beijing on March 19, players and fans alike cheered wildly.

That day Jordan made his debut against the Indiana Pacers, and though he shot only 7 of 28, he moved well considering he had been playing baseball for a year. The game, on NBC, was the most-watched regular-season N.B.A. game in history. Three nights later, in his final appearance in the soon-to-be-scrapped Boston Garden, he scored 27 points in just 26 minutes. His performance was nearly as impressive as the 63 points he scored in a 1986 play-off game on the same parquet floor.

Greatness has a price, though. For some fans, it was the four-figure ticket. Jordan's touching sentiment on his change of uniform numbers--he didn't want to wear his old 23 if his late father couldn't see it--was somewhat diminished by the fact that even as he played his first game, the Champion sportswear company was turning out Jordan 45 jerseys. Sometimes with Jordan, you don't know where the reality ends and the commercial begins. Asked what playing minor-league baseball did for him, he said, "It helped me realize what was important to me. It was like going to my guru." The reference, of course, was to the Gatorade ad in which a guru advises him, "Life is a sport. Drink it up." At $1 for a 12-oz. bottle in Plainfield, Indiana.

Actually, the guru is wrong. Sport is a parquet floor, with crossing patterns of excellence and exploitation. Tyson's story is perhaps the best example of that. When legendary boxing maestro Cus D'Amato discovered Tyson in an upstate New York reformatory, he was a bad kid from Brooklyn. D'Amato didn't exactly turn him into a saint, but he did channel Tyson's aggression into boxing. D'Amato died in 1985, but Tyson continued to improve as a fighter and as a human being. After he knocked out Pinklon Thomas in their 1987 championship fight, Tyson went over to his opponent to see if he was okay. Then he hugged trainer Kevin Rooney and manager Jimmy Jacobs. When Don King came over to hug him, Tyson wanted nothing to do with him.

But that was then. In 1988 Tyson's life spun out of control. There was the marriage to Robin Givens, the death of Jacobs, a pact with King, a car crash, the firing of Rooney. By the time Tyson fought 42-to-1 underdog Buster Douglas in February of 1990, he was out of shape, and Douglas KO'd him in the 10th round.

Then came the fateful Miss Black America pageant in Indianapolis in July '91. That is where and when Tyson terrorized and raped a star-struck contestant named Desiree Washington. On March 26, 1992, he began serving his six-year sentence. When King was recently asked if Tyson had any money left from the millions in purses he earned, the promoter replied, "Farmers can't count on last year's crops."

Tyson couldn't fight in prison, but that hasn't prevented people from fighting over him. In the week before Tyson's release, both King's people and the Muslims claimed that he would follow them. Playing off the famous plea--"No mas, no mas''--of Roberto Duran, King aide Mike Marley said, "No mosque, no mosque."

No matter who Tyson hooks up with, there is every expectation that the 28-year-old will once again regain at least one of the many heavyweight titles. "The division is such a joke," says Rooney, "that Tyson could fight tomorrow and win the title. But that's not the question. The question is whether he can be as good as he once was."

That's also the question for Jordan. He is 32, and his Bulls were no match for the young Magic Friday night, losing 106-99. But Jordan has this going for him: He is his own harshest critic. "It was disappointing. I didn't play the type of basketball they've seen me play." You would have thought he had scored five points. He actually scored 21, with eight assists. As he walked out of the press conference, one sportswriter said, "Elvis has left the building."

Tyson left his building at 5:20 a.m. The slim ex-champ got into King's limousine, wearing a dark suit and a white kufi, an Islamic head covering. Would the limo turn right to the airport, or left to the mosque a few miles away?

It went left, at which point a comic chase ensued, with four helicopters and scores of rental cars in hot pursuit. To avoid the local policemen who had blocked the entrance to the imposing Islamic Center of North America, the reporters scurried across a frosted meadow. But once inside, shoes removed, they got more than just a scoop. They heard Tyson pray out loud, saw a wobbling but still imposing Muhammad Ali and learned a little about a religion.

They also saw a few young worshippers wearing Michael Jordan jerseys.