When Michael Jordan was playing in the NBA, winning six championship rings, many players referred to him as the Black Jesus.

	He came with much fanfare, but how will Jordan leave Washington?

Now that he is among management in Washington, one of the worst teams in the league, many people consider him the Black Plague.

Where's Michael? they shout from the steps of the Capitol Building, the Lincoln Memorial and that other cherished national monument, the MCI Center. In Chicago of course, waiting for Crumbs Krause to take up his more natural occupation of Lollipop Kid so Jordan can become hero once more to the franchise he established in the city he truly loves, comes the answer.

Now that the NBA shifts to Washington for the All-Star game this weekend, with Jordan serving as unofficial host, the questions for MJ most certainly will be raised.

About his status.

About his tenure.

About his plan.

About his team.

This was supposed to be the crowning moment for an organization that for so long has been the East Coast Clippers -- and could become the Clippers if that dreaded rumor about California falling into the sea comes true.

Getting Jordan, the one-time savior of the league. Showing off its new downtown building. Hosting the league's premier non-postseason event. Instead, it does not have a single All-Star. The one player who comes anywhere close, Juwan Howard, gets booed at home games; the former All-Star, Mitch Richmond, has sported a nice collection of suits for the hometown crowd; and the player who always says he should have been an All-Star, Rod Strickland, shows up at more DUI hearings than he does practices.

In Rod He Trusts

Strickland So there's a whole lot of whining in Washington, particularly about Rod Strickland and Mitch Richmond, both of whom have an average annual vale of $10 million each. But unloading either one of them in the offseason was particularly tough because both players were Base Year Compensation (BYC) players in the early offseason. BYC kicks in when a team is over the cap, signs a veteran free agent through the Larry Bird exception and the player's contract in the first year of the new contract is more than 12.5 percent greater than his previous year's contract. Until this past week -- exactly two years from when he signed -- Strickland was tougher to trade because of his BYC status. BYC players are only worth 50 percent of their value for trading purposes in their first year and 75 percent in their second year. So if Strickland makes $10 million and is traded in the first year, the Wizards could theoretically only get $5 million in value for him. In the second year his value rises to $7.5 million. However, the team that trades for Strickland still has to have $10 million in cap room to pay Strickland. On Feb. 4, Strickland's BYC was lifted -- all ready for the trade deadline. That is, if any team really wants him. -- DARREN ROVELL

Worse, its former players, Chris Webber and Rasheed Wallace, are coming back into town to gloat about owning two of the best records in the league, both considered MVP candidates, although Wallace's award would be for Most Volatile Player.

Basically, this Wizards team is worse off, much worse off, than when Michael got here, and now everybody is speculating that Jordan is going to stay for only his five-year contract, then act like a tree and get the hell out of there.

What does this mean? Michael Jordan, a footnote in the history of a moribund franchise? An asterisk? Say it ain't so.

Well, for now at least, take solace. Insiders say it ain't so.

In essence, Michael Jordan is a businessman, and he has too much money invested in this organization to go anywhere else.

Jordan has a five-percent stake in the Wizards and the Washington Capitals now. But if Abe Pollin sells the team to Ted Leonsis, Jordan stands to own 20 percent of the team -- and nobody in their right mind is going to give up an additional 15 percent of an NBA team.

Unfortunately for Jordan, that dotty old optimist Pollin recently told The Washington Post that he was not going to sell the team while it is in a downturn.

I don't think anybody had either the heart or the wherewithal to tell Pollin the team's been in a downtown now for 23 years, and Pollin is quite obviously blind to the travails it has suffered recently.

And as somebody close to the team said, "This thing has not hit rock bottom yet."

Here's why: The team most likely is going to buy out the contract of the cancerous Strickland for $5 million, and Richmond probably will be bought out of his contract for $10 million -- which means, essentially, the team has to pay a $15 million penalty for its poor decisions to trade Wallace and Webber and get nothing in return. It also is likely to buy out the contract of Michael Smith -- who recently was given a DWI after he was spotted driving erratically FROM A HELICOPTER -- AT NIGHT. How much weaving are you doing to be seen from a half mile up at night? Probably more than a Congolese Bushwoman.

In any case, what this means is that the Wizards are going to go into next season with Howard, Calvin Booth, Jahidi White and Richard Hamilton as its core, and that team is not going anywhere but down, down, down. But that, at least, is when Jordan is going to start earning his money, or at least his reputation.

He will be in charge of evaluating talent for the upcoming draft. There still is some question whether Jordan knows talent, given some of the personnel decisions he tried to help make when he was playing in Chicago. But he hasn't really been given a chance to prove it so far.

And he is at least getting himself into the position of having cap room for free agency. He should be given credit for unloading that hoodwinker Ike Austin on the Grizzlies for a bunch of guys in the final years of their contracts.

And GMs around the league say Jordan is not one to make rash decisions. Almost every team in the league has called him trying to get something for nothing, thinking Jordan was either a) not very smart or b) more than willing to make a trade just to make a show of actually doing something. So far, he has not made a particularly poor decision, which is more than can be said for Dick Versace.

This is not to say Jordan has not made mistakes. Take, for instance, that time he said this year's team is definitely going to make the playoffs. Or, the time he ripped his players to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Or, the fact that he still lives in Chicago. I know, it probably is not that big a deal, but the president of a team should show his face more than once a week, just to let someone know he cares.

Many say that Jordan feels hamstrung by Pollin, and that is a legitimate argument because Pollin is known to do things on the cheap. Others say Jordan simply feels shackled by the dire situation in which the organization has placed itself.

The prediction here is that once Pollin unloads the team, Jordan will take up a full-time residence in D.C. and, along with Leonsis, make his mark -- Black Jesus or Black Plague? -- on the team.

For now, though, we'll have to live with his presence at the All-Star game.

Frank Hughes covers the NBA for the Tacoma (Wash.) News-Tribune. He is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.