“I’m doing it for the love of the game. Nothing else. For the love the game.”

– Michael Jordan

He’s back. The guy who many people consider to be the greatest single player in pro basketball history. The guy who dunked from the free throw line. The guy with the 63-point playoff scoring record. The guy with countless other NBA records.

But it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see the logic that makes so many sportswriters and sports fans skeptical about Michael Jordan’s return to basketball. I mean, the guy’s 38 years old.

Allen Iverson’s got a mean crossover. Vince Carter jumps pretty high. Ray Allen shoots over 40 percent from 3-point range. So you have to wonder what a guy like Michael Jordan is thinking.

Here’s a guy who’s pushing 40, essentially a soon-to-be senior citizen, and he’ll be running around trying to stop Kobe from shooting that jumper, or trying to get off one of his own. And to top it off, he already wrote a storybook ending to his career, breaking down Bryan Russell and draining the last minute shot (OK, so he pushed the guy a little), and posing for that last photo op. Yet he chooses to come back. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Or does it?

Think about it for a second – all that stuff adds up to a pretty big challenge. But isn’t that what Michael lives for?

We saw him make the first comeback, making the right adjustments. Going from the high-flying, hard-jamming antics of his younger years, to the turn-around fade-away jumper of his second stint. And during both periods, he used those primary weapons with such skill and proficiency that he was virtually unstoppable. I have no reason to believe that he hasn’t found, or won’t find, a new weapon to win games.

That’s regardless of what we have been hearing from his preparation camp (and I don’t know for a fact that the comments about his game being “garbage” were not entirely set up for PR purposes).

And that’s just the technical side. I haven’t even said anything about his heart, his will to win, that determination that made him keep trying for six years until his first championship in 1990-91.

I’m not going to assert that MJ will be as good at 38 as he was at 18, or 28 or even 35. However, the fact of the matter is that he was so good in his younger days, that even playing at 90 percent or even 80 percent of his old self will be good enough to turn heads.

And oh yeah – never mind that he has so much that he could pass on to the next generation of NBA superstars. Not only in how to play the game technically, but in how to behave and carry themselves on and off the court. Because for all his superstardom, Michael Jordan is one of the classiest players the NBA has ever seen, and I think we can all agree that the newest generation of basketball stars can learn a lot from him in that area, especially since so many of them are fresh out of high school! And then, of course, there’s the little matter of $1 million of his salary going to the relief efforts for the terrorist attacks…

But it’s not that Michael Jordan’s return will have the NBA’s television ratings back up where they used to be. Or that he will help remind a lot of pro athletes how to truly be a role model. The bottom line is this – if a MJ is making a comeback, with all his past accomplishments, I’d be the last man on earth to bet against his success.

Emeka Anyanwu is a senior in electrical engineering from Ames.