Speculation is where we were six months ago. We're pretty close to fact now. Michael wants to take one more look at it, one more good test in Chicago to see if he can come through it physically. And unless something catastrophic happens, I think the announcement will come next week.

Washington is a city of stars. It appreciates star power. Michael Jordan is as big a star as there is. Tickets will be hard to come by -- people who have never been to an NBA game will come to the MCI Center just to see him play. It will be a very difficult ticket.

He obviously isn't going to do as well with Wizards as he did with the Bulls. If they make playoffs, it will be a major surprise for the franchise.

This is Michael Jordan's life -- for anyone to tell him what to do with his life is assumptive on their part. He wants to play, he loves to compete, he hasn't found anything outside of basketball that gives him that charge, so he comes back. That doesn't make him different than 100 other athletes.

Will he be successful? That depends on your definition of successful.

There are certainly problems with him coming back. This is a team building around Richard Hamilton, Courtney Alexander and Kwame Brown. Every shot Jordan takes will be at the expense of one of those guys. With him, they'll be a contender. But long-term, it has a chance to slow the development of some of these players and the franchise. You don't find out how good they are with Michael Jordan taking all the shots.

It's been obvious he's been setting this up for months. He wanted to see if he could physically stand up. If he hadn't broken his ribs earlier this summer, he would have announced it already. He's been getting in shape for the last six months. The mechanism is in place; the league signed off on it during the Finals. It was just a question of whether Michael was ready to go. And he's close to signing off on it.

It's not a bad thing for the NBA. He will help at the gate. He will help TV ratings. You'll see him a lot on NBC and TNT. It has an effect on the league, from TV revenues, T-shirt sales, caps, pennants -- all the merchandising the NBA does. All of those things get a jump when Michael Jordan is playing.

Never underestimate Michael Jordan's belief in his own abilities.