Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, August 27, 1993                   TAG: 9312300004
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SPECULATION

Some reporters and columnists f+idido rush to premature judgment, and their judgments were rushed to premature publication, almost as soon as authorities made a positive identification of James Jordan's cremated remains. Before there was even a prospect of evidence for it, much less time to consider such evidence, some were suggesting in print and over the air that the death might be related to the son's gambling habits.

When evidence did start to emerge, it turned out that the elder Jordan apparently had fallen victim to a random robbery-shooting at a highway rest-stop in South Carolina. In any case, journalists' questions about what might have happened should properly have been a starting point for answer-gathering, not a trigger for publishing woolgathering.

Where Michael Jordan missed, however, was in his failure to understand how much his own behavior contributed to the speculation. Notwithstanding excesses on the occasion of his father's murder, on the whole media treatment of Michael Jordan and his gambling has been very kind - if anything, too kind.

If not a gambling addict, Jordan is at least a very high roller, and his father was said to be involved in his gambling activities. It was his father with whom he repaired to the Atlantic City casinos the night before a National BasketbalI Association championship game in New York City against the Knicks.

Michael Jordan is a great basketball player, perhaps the greatest the world has ever seen. But he doesn't earn his millions, from his salary with the Chicago Bulls and his lucrative commercial endorsements, because of his basketball skills alone. Those skills would be financially meaningless without the structure, of which the media are a large part, that pulls paying fans into arena seats, viewers to their TV sets and consumers into stores that stock Jordan-endorsed merchandise.

In short, the job of being a professional athletic star of Jordan's magnitude - he's perhaps the most famous person in the world - entails more than helping your team win games. It also entails being an ambassador for that portion of show business known as pro sports. And, yes, a role model.

The murder of James Jordan was a tragedy, and evidenceless speculation about a link to his son's activities was not to the media's credit. But Michael Jordan's heavy-duty gambling is no myth. It discredits him and his sport.