THE VERDICT: Michael and Cheli, Part I

A couple months after Michael Jordan issued his final farewell to the Bulls in January of 1999, he was back at the United Center on a Saturday night.

"I'm here to watch a hockey game," declared Michael before the Blackhawks were about to conclude their season with a match against the locally despised and envied Detroit Red Wings, prepping for a run at their third straight Stanley Cup.

En route through the lobby, embracing friends and being greeted royally, Jordan taped a congratulatory message for Wayne Gretzky, a contemporary legend who would retire the next day as a member of the New York Rangers.

But Michael's primary mission was to meet up and hug a pal, Chris Chelios, whom the Blackhawks had traded to their arch rivals in mid-March.

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**THE VERDICT**: Michael and Cheli, Pt. II

"I've always known Cheli and I wish him the best," continued Jordan, dapper in a beret. "I haven't been to many hockey games and my boys wanted to go. It's just an honor for me to come to see him play. I hated to see him leave Chicago, but sometimes you have to make the decisions that are best suited for you."

Jordan then ducked behind a door.

"Just shows up in our locker room, the visitors' locker room, an hour or so before the warmups," recalled Chelios, now a Hall of Fame Ambassador with the Blackhawks. "I don't think he even went to the Chicago room. Just popped into ours. Our guys looked up, and their jaws just dropped. Michael freaking Jordan, just hanging out with the Red Wings, like the regular guy he is. They never thought they'd get an opportunity like that.

"Then he goes over to our coach, Scotty Bowman, and jokes to him, 'Do you need me to teach Cheli how to win again?' It had been a few tough years with the Blackhawks, so I wound up going to a great team in Detroit, where I said I would never play. Which people in Chicago never forgot."

Indeed. Before heading home for the summer, the Blackhawks won the game, 3-2. Eddie Olczyk scored and Tony Amonte broke the 2-2 tie in the third period, by which time Chelios was showered and gone. He logged four shifts for a total of 3 minutes, 19 seconds, before a throaty gathering of 22,647.

"I was getting booed so bad that Scotty probably felt bad for me," Chelios was saying the other day from his place in Malibu. "Plus, Scotty thought I was keeping the crowd too much into the game. So he suggested I get dressed and go up to the suite to join Michael for a few beers. Which I did. Meanwhile, our guys are still blown away by meeting him. They wanted to take him back to Detroit with us, but Michael said they don't like him too much back there. You know, Pistons. For him to come see me, that was typical Michael. Loyal. A great and loyal friend."

Like millions of others confined by this pandemic, Chelios finds succor in "The Last Dance," a 10-part ESPN documentary about the Bulls' dynasty that culminated with a sixth National Basketball Association championship in 1998. Jordan is the star, of course. He always was.

"I still get goosebumps watching that," said Chelios. "It's been a lot of years, and everybody knows how it's going to end. But to see all those highlights and those faces. The security guys who were so close to Michael, and his main man, George. George Koehler, who picked him up from O'Hare when Michael showed up for the first time as a rookie from North Carolina in 1984 looking for a ride. They're still together."

In June of 1990, Chelios was dealt from the Montreal Canadiens to the Blackhawks in exchange for Denis Savard.

"It was that summer, my first one back in Chicago where I grew up, that I met Michael," Chelios recounted. "I went to a White Sox game, and Michael was there in the suite of Jerry Reinsdorf, who also owned the Bulls and still does. I can't honestly remember how I wound up there too, but I did and Michael and I hit it off right away. Was he smoking a cigar? Probably.

"We kept running into each other after that. That was at a point where he could still go some places without stopping traffic, if you know what I mean. We became good friends and still are. I was a fan. I am a fan. And to go fishing and golfing, as I now do, with the greatest basketball player ever, to play in the same building with him for all those years, to hang out with such a regular guy, it's fun. It's always fun, being around Michael. So normal. Crazy talent, but otherwise so normal."