It bores me.

That's the real reason.

	WE'VE GOT MJ COVERED
	If or when Michael Jordan has something to say -- um, fax -- we're prepared. Here is some other MJ-related content: Return-o-meter Hughes: Let us enjoy him Bucher: Not thrilled Friend: Welcome back

It's not because he might tarnish his legacy, or that his new teammates don't remotely add up to a supporting cast, or that we've been strung along for months waiting for the teasing to stop. It's not the threat of him exposing today's stars as PR creations. It's not even any of that bunk about spoiling the perfect ending to an unparalleled career ... since he pushed off on Bryon Russell anyway.

The story simply bores me. Michael Jordan, back in his baggies and air-filled joints, attempting a fairy-tale comeback at nearly 40?

Bores me.

You can come up with lots of justifications to lobby against the return of His Airness, but that's a list for someone else to compile. Michael Jordan has the right to do whatever he wants with his life, save go out in public. If he wants to come back and put up with Courtney Alexander, telling MJ how he should be the one taking all the shots, bless him. Mike's entitled.

Same rights here, though. Don't persecute those who simply choose not to join the worldwide fawning ... including those who felt that way before our nation's tragedies made everything else in life seem unimportant. Don't scorn those who are perfectly content to watch the guys we've got right now.

Sacrilegious as it sounds, federal law doesn't actually mandate Jordan worship. You don't have to thank the heavens as if Unretirement II is a miraculous blessing. Jordan speaks often about his insatiable "love for the game." His love. You don't have to love the idea. You're not required to sanction the widespread notion that this poor, suffering league needs Jordan to swoop down and save all the mortals.

Some of us -- vague phrase synonymous with "me" -- have always wondered why the last comeback wasn't enough to please people, why anyone needs more. Jordan stopped playing, tried baseball, chafed from his Mendozian success rate at the plate and still found time to win three more NBA titles. Yet we still hang on his every pang, send reporters on parking-lot stakeouts for hints, dissect anonymous quotes from his hand-picked pickup rivals and pray that he'll pull a Mario.

Well, not all of us.

Some of us - OK, me again - were somewhat bugged that the Bulls always won everything. But just a little bugged, because you can't complain too much about dominance. You can be discouraged or frustrated, maybe, but not uninterested. There has to be some awe thrown in when, over an eight-season span, the NBA endures the same ending six times. Air and the Aires were that unrelentingly fearsome.

This is something else. This is Jordan, having already suffered about five injuries since the comeback flirtations started in the spring, emerging from three seasons away to hoard the spotlight. And for what? To make the Wizards mediocre? Again, some of us are perfectly content to watch Allen Iverson, Dirk Nowitzki and Vince Carter.

More curiosity, in this cyberspace, surrounds what happens next to the Lakers. The Spurs. The Sixers. The Raptors. Kings, Mavericks, Sonics, Blazers and Knicks, too. Maybe even the Clips.

Did the champs, on a shoestring budget, actually get better? Or will they be derailed by all the early injuries and the next, inevitable round of Shaq vs. Kobe?

Will the sweepers-turned-sweepees from San Antonio ever recover from that humbling transformation? Or was the ugly summer divorce from Derek Anderson just another step in a franchise-wide unraveling that ultimately leads to the loss of Tim Duncan?

Can Larry Brown's latest tweakings keep Philly atop the East? Is suddenly stable Toronto going to knock AI back to Brawlsville with Larry?

Chris Webber, actually happy in Sacramento? Mark Cuban and Don Nelson, putting together a team that's actually better than Webber's? How long before Gary Payton is traded? How long before the Blazers push their chemically unsafe payroll over $100 million? How long before the Knicks try to beat Paul Allen to it, just for what they spend on point guards and smallish power forwards?

How about LA's other team, too fun to ignore with Odom, Miles and Brand?

Those are the stories some of us might prefer to the Jordan/Doug Collins reunion, if you give them a look. Think about it.

If Jordan plays well, after so many predicted he no longer can, what does it prove? He's already walking greatness. He's on the short list for Best Of All-Time, no matter what happens next. Tell me something I didn't know.

And if Jordan fails? It will all be conveniently forgotten, eventually. Just like Babe Ruth playing for the Boston Braves, and Muhammad Ali getting pounded by Leon Spinks, and Willie Mays hitting like Wesley Snipes as a Met. You had asterisks in sports long before Phil Jackson stamped one on the Spurs.

If we have to proffer a guess, he's still going to be pretty good. After all, he's no mug. He's Michael Jordan. He'll put up numbers by osmosis.

But that won't change who he plays for and whom he's playing with. Participating in the losing first-hand will only confirm what Jordan must already suspect -- that the Wiz needs more than ol' No. 23, pushing fortysomething, to win 40 games.

If you don't want to listen to me, listen to Jordan. It was the icon himself who revealed, while cornered on one of those press stake-outs, that he thinks Commissioner David Stern is only "50-50" on the prospect of filling up the NBA Store with a batch of overpriced Jordan jerseys.

"He thinks he's got a good product," Jordan said. "And he doesn't want to be dependent on Michael Jordan."

He's not alone, Your Airness. Some of us humble observers feel the same way. Some of us -- guess who? -- would have preferred to see you stick with the GM job, to see if you'd eventually be MJ in the front office, too. Just when it started to get interesting, with the Juwan Howard trade and the Kwame Brown draft and the Rod Strickland/Mitch Richmond dumpings, we're back to comebacks again.

Bores me.

Marc Stein, who covers the NBA for The Dallas Morning News, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.