If you listen closely, and by this I mean closely enough to hear things that aren't normally audible to anyone but dogs and Steely Dan, you can make out the sounds of perhaps the NBA's all-time greatest "in the moment" player figuring out the most difficult lesson imaginable:

	Dr. Jack doesn't think Michael will be turning in his business suit for a uniform too soon.

When you're the guy in charge, there really is no tomorrow. There's only the day after tomorrow, and the day after that...

And, look, that's if everything goes right.

Michael Jordan is reshaping the Washington Wizards, which was pretty much a given when Jordan first stepped in as president. It is a job that is proving every bit as difficult as was predicted for Jordan, and we haven't even begun the Rod Strickland discussion.

But as things move along here, it's hard not to be struck by two very forceful observations: First, that Jordan, wherever he may choose to live, is working that executive's learning curve nearly as effectively as he did the transition from college to the pros.

And second, that we are talking about one hellaciously long-term deal with the Wizards. From the grunt's eye-view, the question isn't whether Jordan is up to the task of clearing salary cap room for the franchise and retooling the roster from old and irrelevant to young and (at least) promising. I can't think of a really solid reason to doubt that Jordan, a success at pretty much everything he has tried as a pro besides hitting the curveball, could eventually accomplish just that.

Nope: The question, rather, is whether Jordan himself will be around to see it.

Did you follow the projected timelines in the Juwan Howard trade? We're talking about YEARS before good results are possible in Washington. It's classic front-office forward-type thinking, quite awesome in scope – but for a guy like Jordan, it has to represent something of a new paradigm.

With Howard and his $39 million in salary over the next two seasons off the books, Jordan can turn his attention to the apparently more nettlesome tasks of shedding the salaries of Strickland and Mitch Richmond, two veterans whose draws just don't compute on a 13-42 team – and whose trade value is severely limited. The Wizards can buy out those two and Michael Smith for a combined $15.25 million, part of a major push to get under the cap.

Still, it's amazing to listen to Jordan set out this plan for his team to possibly be able to pursue free agents – in the summer of 2002. This is a franchise mired so deep in the financial muck that its president is talking very seriously, and quite soberly, about potentially being an improved team by 2003. In pro sports dog years, that's a millennium from now.

	“	We've still got a long ways to go. I'm pretty sure you guys are going to stay on (me) until we start winning. Right now, we've just made a step in the right direction. I've only kept you off (me) for a little while. ”
		— Michael Jordan, Wizards president

Whatever else Jordan is learning about the trade, he certainly has picked up on one thing: Whether you inherit the mess or create it yourself, you're going to catch a good ration of the flak if some improvement doesn't come around fairly quickly. In a surprise to some but not to others, Jordan is displaying a remarkably thin skin about it.

Discussing the Howard deal, Jordan told reporters, "We've still got a long ways to go. I'm pretty sure you guys are going to stay on (me) until we start winning. Right now, we've just made a step in the right direction. I've only kept you off (me) for a little while."

It's been that kind of a year, touchy in almost every regard. Jordan has been tweaked for not spending his days around the MCI Center or even the 202 area code, and it's obvious that some of his early notions about running a franchise – he declared up front that the Wizards were going to play harder and get more serious about things, only to see the team perform just as putridly as before – were either naive or grounded in a personal ethic that others simply don't share. Michael was even booed lightly at a recent Wizards home game.

Nevertheless, Jordan is the man who just found a way to trade a player, Howard, whose larded contract supposedly rendered him unmoveable. He's got a line on lightening the team's wallet by one Strickland and one Richmond. He's got a likely top five lottery pick next summer, and he is maneuvering for up to $20 million in cap clearance the summer following that.

In short, the president of the Wizards is doing everything he can to put Washington in position to begin getting competitive over, say, the next three or four years. It's the kind of timetable that would have driven Jordan the Player absolutely insane. For Jordan the Executive, it's the only timetable that makes the slightest smidgen of sense. You could call it a new paradigm, sure.

Mark Kreidler is a columnist for the Sacramento Bee, which has a web site at http://www.sacbee.com/.