Michael Jordan surely expected a different ending, not a finale amid the turmoil of his self-assembled, crumbling team.

Jordan finishes his NBA playing career -- Part III -- in Philadelphia on Wednesday night. His Washington Wizards teammates will probably try to send him out a winner, but there's no telling what to expect after the tongue-lashing some players got from coach Doug Collins at Jordan's last home game.

After Monday night's 93-79 loss to the New York Knicks, Collins criticized some players for showing "insidious" disrespect to the coach. He implied it could lead to a roster purge in the offseason.

Jordan's work in Washington hardly ends Wednesday night. He will sit down with team owner Abe Pollin after the season knowing he wants to re-assume his duties as president of basketball operations -- he served in that capacity from January 2000 to October 2001, when he came out of retirement to play -- after he files his retirement papers with the NBA this week.

"My ending is going to be when this team is successful," Jordan said.

Collins said he wants the Wizards' to square away their front office as soon as possible before handling offseason personnel issues.

"We need to get everything in place in terms of the hierarchy and how it's going to be so we can start moving in the right direction," Collins told the Washington Post.

According to the newspaper, Jordan and Pollin will negotiate their possible reunion as the top decision-makers in the organization some time in the next week, and it is believed Jordan wants the final say on basketball issues, which he had before, and he may also want to add some front-office personnel, a source told the Post.

Jordan also plans to reacquire the equity, the Post reported, he had as a member of Lincoln Holdings, which owns 44 percent of the team.

Pollin apparently would like Jordan to be in Washington more than he was during his first run as president; Jordan did much of his work from Chicago, where his family lives.

"As soon as Michael's ready, we'll talk. I'll be ready," Pollin told the Post. "It's going to be what he wants and what I want and it's going to be a combination of what his desires are and what mine are."

If Jordan and Pollin can't come to terms, general manager Wes Unseld likely will be given the role of shaping the roster. Unseld ran the Wizards' basketball operations before Jordan's arrival and has been the franchise's top basketball executive while Jordan played.

Jordan said he would give himself just an average grade for his three years as the Wizards de facto general manager. In the future, he said he'll concentrate more on finding players with desire, passion and a willingness to be learn and be coached -- even if they are considered marginal by the NBA's talent standards.

"I would take 12 guys who have a strong passion to play this game over 12 stars who don't respect the game," Jordan said.

But that's Jordan the personnel man. What about Jordan the 40-year-old player, who wanted so badly to get to the playoffs one last time? He signed some promising names this season for that final run -- Jerry Stackhouse, Bryon Russell, Larry Hughes, Charles Oakley -- but the playing styles and personalities were a bad mix from the start.

Then again, according to Collins, even making the playoffs might not have been enough to satisfy Jordan, his critics or even his fans.

"Is there any way Michael could win coming back to play?" Collins said. "Is the only scenario that we win a championship? It's perception. If we were to win four more games and get swept in the first round, would Michael have been successful?

"What is success? If we don't win the championship, for him coming back is a failure. He's judged at a standard no one else even comes close to."

As for whether Jordan will retire for good -- he's come back twice already -- he pointed out that this was the first time he announced it in advance. He wasn't really ready to quit last time, but he didn't want to play for another coach other than Phil Jackson in Chicago, where they won six championships together.

"With the Bulls, it wasn't my option," Jordan said. "If Phil would have stayed, I would have still played. That wasn't the end, it was because I didn't want to play for a rebuilding project. This is my choice. I'm looking to walk into this because I know there won't be another chance of me being in the league."

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.