A few weeks ago, following the success of Pathaan, the latest spy flick from Yash Raj Films, the actor John Abraham paid a most generous compliment to his co-star Shah Rukh Khan. “I don’t think he is an actor anymore. He is an emotion,” Abraham said of Khan, who is making his return to the big screen after a gap of four years.

This heartfelt tribute pretty much sums up basketball legend Michael Jordan’s (MJ) effect on his fans to this day. As MJ turns 60 on February 17, he continues to hold sway over his millions of followers across the world in a way that would make the Pied Piper proud. When the world went into lockdown mode in early 2020, it was Jordan’s documentary series The Last Dance that brought cheer to so many people. It kept the buzz around the NBA alive even as the league grappled with the effects of a COVID-19 shutdown. That Jordan had played his last National Basketball Association (NBA) game 17 years earlier, on April 16, 2003, was a minor detail.

No other man in modern team sport has stood more for winning than Jordan. His Chicago Bulls won six of eight championships between 1991 to 1998, with Jordan’s own 18-month retirement, between late 1993 and early 1995, coming in the way of the Bulls winning eight straight. He never lost a finals game, be it in college, the NBA or at the Olympics. When the game was on the line, Jordan always delivered.

It is why Jordan has come to represent excellence. Look up a sporting synonym for perfection and you will find Michael Jordan. It was what former president Barack Obama referred to when presenting Jordan the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States of America’s highest civilian honour, in 2016.

Addressing a room full of achievers that included Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres and Bruce Springsteen, Obama spoke effusively of Jordan on that day.  “There is a reason you call somebody, ‘The Michael Jordan of.’ The Michael Jordan of neurosurgery or the Michael Jordan of rabbis or the Michael Jordan of outrigger canoeing. They know what you’re talking about because Michael Jordan is the Michael Jordan of greatness. He is the definition of somebody so good at what they do that everybody recognizes it. That’s pretty rare.”

No other basketball player put together a more compelling record of individual and team accomplishment as Jordan. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar may have won six NBA titles like Jordan, but five of Kareem’s six championships came alongside Magic Johnson, another basketball icon, as his teammate. Jordan had Scottie Pippen, a fairly versatile player as Robin-to-his-Batman, but Pippen was no Magic.

Then there is LeBron James. While James has been prolific for far longer, Jordan achieved more in a far shorter span than the 38-year-old baller. James, who just recently became the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, has won four titles in 20 years or one NBA ring every five years. Jordan’s six rings over 15 years, average out to one every two-and-a-half years. Jordan’s sneaker sales also dwarf James’ success in this sphere, with the Jordan brand outselling James’ signature sneakers multiple times over. This is a stunning fact given that James is still playing while Jordan hasn’t walked on to the hardwood floor for a competitive NBA game for close to 20 years.

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The writer Jon Greenberg summed up Jordan’s status in the GOAT debate aptly. Positioning MJ at the very top of The Athletic’s Top 75 NBA players of all time rankings, Greenberg wrote: “This ranking is not in dispute. It’s a formality, a wave of the hand, a tip of the cap, an admittance of the obvious. The sky is blue. The earth is round. Michael Jordan, No. 1 on The Athletic’s NBA 75. The best player in the 75-year history of the NBA. Case closed. There is no next. There is only one, and it’s Jordan.”

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This is the extent of Jordan’s greatness. That he has made objective what should essentially be a very subjective debate. Besides The Athletic, ESPN too had Jordan as numero uno among the players who featured on the NBA’s 75th anniversary team. That he can make a grown man like Obama gush over him like a fanboy even as he continues to represent the zeitgeist in basketball’s sneaker universe. That he made winning a habit and left his fans feeling euphoric every time he stepped on to the court.

Call him what you may – ‘His Airness’, ‘Black Jesus’ or ‘Black Cat’ – Jordan will always truly remain in a league of his own.