Road Dog, all up in this piece, telling it straight, my way.

	MJ proved at MSG that it's still for "the love of the game".

Don't be saying Michael Jordan is done. Not around me.

Jordan may be almost done. But he ain't done yet.

Not to me. Maybe to Dub. But not to me. I still believe.

"Well, the Wiz won't make the playoffs," Dub said. "You and Mike have got to learn to believe that, and live with it."

Dub talked me into coming down to D.C. again anyway, even though he was talking all crazy like that, the wutz.

"They've got that killer road trip out West, five in seven nights, Suns on March 21, Warriors March 23, Portland on March 25, Seattle the next night, then the Lakers at the Stapler on Friday March 28. We gotta go to that last one, Dog, to pay our respects. I've been a pallbearer before ..."

"Pallbearer?" I said, screwing up my face. What Dub said was smelling to me like rotten fish. "Who died, Dub?"

"Well, the Wizards aren't dead -- yet -- but they're short, not necessarily on talent, but that too. Mostly on balls ..."

"Shawt?" I said. "Right. They shawt. But He ain't."

"Jordan, down to your last breath," Dub said, chuckling, shaking his head.

"Damn skippy," I said. "and then some."

Sick-ass Dub had said we should follow MJ around on what Dub said was his "last call." So we started last week, last Friday at the MCI Center. Good gym, the MCI. It ain't the Garden, but then, what is? Just like Kobe or T-Mac or KG -- all put together -- ain't Jordan. But who is?

"Oh, so you gonna stop watching hoop when he's gone?" Dub sneered, as we came in the MCI. Knows I'm hooked. I just pointed around. Maybe 1,000 kids and grown folks were wearing different Jordan jerseys and hookups, Wiz 23, Bulls' 23, Carolina blue 23, white Olympic joint with red 23, more Air Jordans on more feet that you can count. Roy Jones Jr. danced around John Ruiz with a pair on.

The Glove, the Bucks and them were in D.C., which to me always stood for Damn Confusion, which is what Dub can be about Jordan sometimes. Dub thinks the world of MJ, but I love MJ. There's a difference. Dub keeps trying to run MJ off the stage before time. Jordan and them (what them?) needed the win.

	OK, so the Wizards are headed for the lottery, but don't tell MJ that.

Dub ran off with his sportswriter dudes; Dupree, Wilbon, Scoey Nance, Aldridge and them, picking their brains without paying 'em for it, stealing free consultations; Dub, he be good for that. Dub said he could catch up on the whole league in 10 minutes just by asking them dudes certain questions; said he was happy and proud to talk to them, said something about expertise, subtleties, whatever that is; then came back up in my face talking about how J-Kidd and Parker could play together in the same backcourt easy, as if I didn't already know that, or how Eddie Griffin was hanging out with scumbags down in Houston, which, okay, I didn't know, how Stevie Franchise may not be the answer at point but 2, how Yao was Wow, if he wanted it, how DuPree shocked him by saying he still liked the Lakers over the Sacto Kings, even with all them live bodies the Kings got, how DuPree said yeah, but they could only play five at a time, and if two of the five on the same team was Shaq and Kob -- it was still ball game.

Yeah, I thought. Unless they ran into Mike five years ago.

While Dub was off picking sportswriter brain, I hung with the ushers. Go ahead on and scuff. But them ushers see 41 runs a year. Best seat in the house. Only they ain't sitting.

So I asked 'em, any way the Wiz make it into the playoffs?

"Naw," said one usher.

"Hell, naw," said another one. "Not with that West Coast swing at the end. But Mike, he's good for 27 tonight. Seen him get 40. And he is 40."

The ushers at MCI love Mike. Some usher supervisor come running up to us, talking about it's getting crowded in here, but I flashed that credential Dub got me, so he chilled. Hey, it's Jordan's last games. It should be crowded, Mister. But I know where you coming from. You gotta look busy giving orders to people so they look busy followin' 'em.

Game came down to one last shot, Wiz down three. Dub's boy, Larry Hughes, running at about 80 percent efficiency because of a bad ankle, had the open look, up top, from three. But he swung it over to Jordan and Glove was there and got his hands up and Mike missed a three to tie. Air. Glove come making a fist to himself. I snarled at him.

Mike got 27. But the Wiz lost. Stack didn't give a %#&$. Laettner, of all people, played hard and well. But it just seemed like to me that Stack didn't give a %#&$.

My nose was burning for some reason, as I saw Mike slowly get dressed. Looked a little busted up. Mike ain't got but a few runs left in him. We went to Kwame Brown, and I told Kwame he gonna be all right. Mike picked him.

"Yep. I've been a pallbearer like this before," Dub said.

"Yeah? Who died?" I asked. "Who the &%#$ died!?"

	What will be MJ's final memory of a game he brought to billions?

"Don't run hot on me, Dog," Dub said. "It happens to everybody. I was in Vegas the night in 1980 that Ali lost to Larry Holmes -- and Larry was Ali's ex-sparring partner. That's what this is like. See it in the face of Wilbon, and all the guys who grew up on him; they saw him do some things. They didn't just cover him, they believed in him; he became organic to their own existence; their primes was his prime; and now they have to witness the game moving on without him. It's like getting a divorce neither party wants. That's hard to do. It's like a life ending young. Don't ask them about no Kobe, no T-Mac. Not right now. Especially Wilbon. They are Jordan's. They'll always be his ..."

"Glove, making Mike hit Air ..." I shook my dome, like there was water in my do-rag, like my Yankee cap was on straight. Just didn't seem right to me, Glove beating Mike.

"Done," Dub said.

"Like hell. Your boy Hughes should'a took that shot."

"True. True that. But he knew who that was on his right. He just said to me that he'd gladly take the shot every time, but he didn't have a good grip on it. Why? 'Cause his eyes were cut to Jordan. Hard to play with Mike. Hard to relax. His legend works against him with the other guys. They're scared to screw up. Kwame's damn near paralyzed when Mike comes around. Like praying in front of Jesus ..."

"That ain't on Mike," I said. "That's on them."

Off to see the Wizards, again, this time at the Garden. Mike had 39 points, on 13 of 22 from the field. Alley I. can't shoot a percentage like that at the pistol range. Forty years old, 13 of 22, crooked numbers across the box ... and the Wiz still lost to the Knicks by one. Mike ran out of time.

Then Mike got frustrated. Tends to happen when you get 39 and the next high scorer, L. Hughes, gets 13, and Stack goes one for seven. "It's sad," Mike said, before saying it was pitiful that a 40-year-old had more desire than 23-, 24- and 25-year-olds.

"Damn. Mike does not want to go out like this. Hope it won't get too ugly, Dog," Dub said. "It usually does end ugly. Like Babe Ruth with the Boston Braves."

"Babe Who? What? What's ugly, Dub? Mike? Mike's beautiful. You hear what Mike told Shandon in the game? He said, 'You can't guard me, Shandon ... you can't hold me.' See the way Spree and them avoided Shandon after that? Spree know. They all know. And they always will."

"I know, too -- I know the Wiz won't make the playoffs."

"That ain't Mike's fault. I'm following Mike until the end."

"Yeah. The bitter end."

	Jordan fans got a dose of reality when the All-Star Game didn't go Mike's way.

"I'm a hardcore Knick fan, but hoop is in my blood, Dub, and always will be. Mike and his game moved me, like the the sun, moon and stars move the tides ..."

"Damn, Dog. Mike must be from another planet, to inspire you toward the general vicinity of poetry. So ... are we going to the Stapler?" Dub asked. "For his last hurrah?"

"I'm going, but it ain't no last hurrah. Might be last hurrah for Kobe. Ain't no last hurrah for Mike. Mike blimmortal."

"Bli-mortal?"

"No. Blim-mortal. Mike Be Bling-bling, Mike Be I. He be Me. Be Like Mike. And He be immortal. Mike just be."

Dub just said, "Oh." Dub -- funny dude. Like a stroke.

T-Mac invaded MCI on March 11. Caught it on the tube with Dub. I kept waiting for Mike to explode for 40 more.

Maybe later. He's biding his time. I know it.

I know he's gonna put on a show at the Stapler. Last call.

"So. Then we're going to the Stapler for Mike's last ... for Mike's show," Dub said. "Remember the All-Star Game? How Jermaine O'Neal screwed it up for Mike? Remember how Kobe didn't guard Mike in the fourth quarter, how Adelman put Shawn Marion on Mike instead?"

"I remember way more than that," I said. "You want to know what I remember about Michael Jordan? You got all day? What you doing for the next year, Dub? Besides that, Shawn Marion is a hard check. Shawn Marion 6-9. Shawn Marion be digging deep. And Mike still used him. Mike still got his space. Mike still got off. And Mike 40!"

"I know, Dog," Dub said. "It's hard, letting go."

"I ain't letting nuttin' go!"

"Dog ... it's over. It was the most beautiful run. It made a double-rainbow look plain and grey. It was the Great Getting Up Time of Michael Jordan, the Years of Living Dangerously, the Running Over by the Bulls ..."

"Nah. It was life, Dub. That's what it was."

"Yeah. Yeah, Dog. He was something, wasn't he?"

"Something? He was the #&%!damndest, sweetest, coldest, fiercest, down-est, unbelievablest, most unstoppable hard-rock sumbitch me, you or anybody ever saw, or ever will."

"Period end of story?"

	Jordan is ending his career exactly how it started -- tons of points in a losing effort.

"Period end of story."

"Now you gotta move on, Dog," Dub said. "Gotta let go the past, appreciate the new guys, the Duncs, KGs, Kobes ..."

"I do? Yeah. I will. I have ... when it's over. But it ain't over. When he's gone, he's gone. But he ain't gone yet."

"You ain't this loyal to your old lady," Dub said.

"My old lady can't drop 39 at age 40 at the Garden. My old lady ain't got six rings. My old lady didn't change ball ..."

Dub threw up his hands. Why? Don't know. Don't care.

Mike will be in LaLa soon, where it started, in '91, when he beat Magic and them at the Forum in Inglewood. Long time back, seems like. This time it's all up in the Stapler ...

One time. One last time. March 28. I'm there. You?

Ralph Wiley spent nine years at Sports Illustrated and wrote 28 cover stories on celebrity athletes. He is the author of several books, including "Best Seat in the House," with Spike Lee, "Born to Play: The Eric Davis Story," and "Serenity, A Boxing Memoir."