Not just in America, or Chicago, where with grateful tears in his eyes he carried home the gleaming gold championship trophy, but in places one might never expect, Michael Jordan is a hero.
Ted Ewanchiw of ProServ, the management group that handles Jordan's endorsements, said he had been receiving calls from Japan. "They want him for commercials," he said.
Dan Peterson, the voice on telecasts of National Basketball Association games in Italy, said Jordan's basketball video was second only to an Italian soccer video in sales there.
"I was just speaking to a broadcaster in Yugoslavia," someone said to Jordan a few days ago, "and he told me you're the biggest star there. They see the games on tape delays."
"Bigger than Divac? Bigger than Kukoc?" asked Jordan, mentioning two of the country's best basketball players.
"Bigger than anyone," he was told. "What does that mean to you?"
"It means," Jordan said, "relaxation."
"Sure. For a couple of hours they can sit back and enjoy a game. I know that they've got more problems there than just who's going to win or lose a basketball game. But for a few hours, it's relaxation."
There is more than pure entertainment, though, that can be taken from the experience that is Michael Jordan, the aerobatic basketball player, who seems to come through regardless of the defense, the pressure, a high ceiling or low, the head winds, air pockets or, as against the Pistons, when the atmosphere is as dense as soup.
Yet with just his pure, colossal physical ability, Michael Jordan still wasn't a member of an N.B.A. championship team. It took him seven years to get the title ring, which he won on Wednesday when the Bulls beat the Lakers, 108-101, to take the final playoff series, four games to one.
"It's been a struggle, a long, long seven years," Jordan said. "When I came, it was a sad situation. We started from scratch, the bottom. A lot of bad teams. A lot of improvement. Step by step, inch by inch."
The day before Game 5, someone asked him if he was anxious for the title. "I'm patient," he said. He didn't add that he had learned patience for seven years.
There was frustration early on, and toil. But along with that there was also the education of Michael Jordan that had to be enhanced. He discovered the trick that Magic Johnson had discovered, and Larry Bird, and Isiah Thomas, all contemporaries and stars of teams with multiple titles. "You can't do it by yourself," Jordan said. In the final minutes of the final game, for example, Jordan looked for the open man, who happened to be Paxson, Paxson, Paxson, Paxson and Paxson, and hit that deft jump shooter with what might be known as very good paxes.
Jordan has also found that there was more to basketball than just offense (though with practice in the pros he became an excellent outside shooter rather than just a fair one). He has developed into one of the best defensive players in the game. Defense takes heart and will. "Most of the people sitting up in the stands won't appreciate your effort on defense," Honey Russell, the late coach of Seton Hall, said, "but your teammates and coach will, and the opposing team."
Many times, the star offensive player does not want to exert himself on defense, so to be fresh for the crowd-pleasing shooting. Not Jordan. He defended against Magic Johnson, and took him for much of the games, and for much of the 94-foot court. Jordan committed five fouls doing this in Game 1 of the series, but wised up and was more careful, though no less dogged, in the following games. This was leadership, demonstrating to the other players his sublimation of ego for the perceived goal.
Beyond that, his nose-diving, looping, taxiing on defense to flick at a ball, or deflect a pass, or interrupt a dribble, or box out for rebounds, things that never are seen in a box score, were observed and often duplicated by teammates.
It was also instructive how he played one-on-one defense, as much with his feet and his head as with his hands. "When I was young," he said, "I had to learn the fundamentals of basketball. You can have all the physical ability in the world, but you still have to know the fundamentals."
Is there more to Jordan than entertainment? "Without heroes," said a character in Bernard Malumad's novel "The Natural, "we're all plain people and don't know how far we can go."
Jordan has a lot of plain people in him. But Jordan is a hero because, exercising traits open to most of the rest of us -- patience, doggedness, thoughtfulness and desire -- he gave wings to his physical gifts.