The other shoe dropped yesterday. Exactly one week after a settlement ended the National Basketball Association's six-month labour dispute, the game's most visible player, and arguably its best ever, officially announced his retirement.

Michael Jordan's decision was not entirely unexpected. Since the moment he sunk the winning basket to defeat the Utah Jazz in last June's NBA Finals, it had been widely speculated that he would ride off into the sunset on the strength of that dramatic moment.

Jordan, loyal to his union brethren, had turned up at just enough union meetings to keep management guessing, and delayed formalising his retirement until after the lockout so as not to undermine the players' negotiating position.

It was a selfless gesture, albeit one that didn't cost him much, and one that should not have surprised those who recalled Jordan's stance in the 1994-95 baseball strike, one which coincided with his first retirement from the Chicago Bulls.

In October of 1993, only 30 years old and seemingly in his prime, Jordan stunned the basketball world by announcing that he would not be returning to the Bulls, who had won their third consecutive NBA title the previous summer. While he cited the media's obsession with his large gambling losses and the recent murder of his father, James, among his reasons for walking away, mainly, he said, he wanted to spend more time with his family.

Just four months later, Jordan became the most-watched spring-training phenomena in baseball history when he worked out at the Florida facility of the Chicago White Sox, with whom he had signed in his search for a new challenge.

Playing baseball at the major league level is the aspiration of every American boy, even Michael Jordan, although he had not played the sport since high school.

Having been among the media throng charged with chronicling Jordan's exploits that spring, I can attest that, while he did not display major league abilities then, had he been a callow 18-year-old rookie instead of a 30-year-old one, not a man alive could have safely bet against his eventually reaching that plateau.

He spent the 1994 season attempting to learn to hit the curve ball for the White Sox minor league affiliate in Birmingham, batting a meagre .202 and striking out an average of once every four at-bats.

Any other thirty-something player would have been given his outright release after a year like that, but management had other plans for Jordan: he could have gone straight to the major leagues that spring in return for being the owners' poster boy in a running labour dispute.

The major league Players' Association had gone on strike in August of 1994, killing off that year's World Series, and the rancour had lasted throughout the winter. The baseball owners prepared to open the season using rosters of "replacement" players, and there was no shortage of aspiring baseballers willing to sacrifice their principles for one taste of playing at the major league level.

Jordan might not have given the scab players credibility, but he would have ensured packed houses wherever the ersatz White Sox played. Having been assured of a chance to fulfil his dream by playing in the big leagues, he instead walked away again, refusing to betray the major leaguer players - who had not, it should be noted, exactly welcomed him with open arms when he arrived in Sarasota the previous spring.

Say what you will about him, Michael Jordan is and was a stand-up guy. He proved it then and he demonstrated it again with the exercise which concluded yesterday.

Jordan rejoined the Bulls that March, but his basketball was a bit rusty and Chicago were eliminated in the 1995 Eastern semi-finals. They have won every year since. In fact, beginning with the 1990-91 season, Chicago have won six of the last eight NBA titles. The only two they didn't win in this decade were between 1993 and 1995 - the two years Jordan didn't play a full season. He also won a national collegiate title at North Carolina and two Olympic gold medals - in 1982 as an amateur, and as a member of the 1992 "Dream Team" in Barcelona when professionals were allowed to compete for the first time.

His career scoring average of 31.5 points per game is the highest in NBA history. Jordan is a 12-time All-Star, 10-time scoring champion and five-time Most Valuable Player. He was the 1985 Rookie of the Year, even though he had yet to mould himself into a great complete player. I can recall watching him - and this was so long ago that he had hair - score 63 points against the Boston Celtics in a 1986 play-off game, one which the Bulls lost, for not entirely unrelated reasons. Just two years later, Jordan was voted the NBA's Defensive Player of the Year.

A statue of Jordan, erected outside Chicago's United Center during his 1994-95 baseball hiatus, bears the inscription:

The Best There Ever Was, The Best There Ever Will Be

Jordan also changed America's perception of black athletes as commercial spokesmen. He flogged everything: breakfast cereal, long-distance service, hamburgers, soft drinks, hot dogs, batteries, underwear, and, especially, athletic footwear. He also starred in a movie, Space Jam, with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Bob Hoskins.

He was criticised for his excessive losses at blackjack tables in casinos around the country, although God knows he could afford it - Jordan's worth is estimated at $500 million - and was hardly a likely target for gamblers looking to squeeze a player. In 1997 alone, he earned $78 million - $30 million in basketball salary and $48 million in endorsements. Assuredly, he had his blind spots, and most of them occurred in the proximity of a golf course, where Jordan found himself among that all-too-familiar strain of inveterate golfer - the eight-handicapper who, for reasons having more to do with vanity than ability, insists on playing to a three. It is a bit of self-delusion that has cost him many thousands of dollars over the years.

Once, during a practice session preceding a 1993 play-off game at Madison Square Garden, we were in the process of negotiating a mano-a- mano match as we watched his team-mates on the floor.

"What's your handicap?" asked Jordan. That ever-bemused smile on his face, his eyes swung around to meet mine without his ever moving his head.

Without missing a beat I replied: "I only have one eye."

The next day the Post ran an expose chronicling an all-night gambling junket he and his father had made to Atlantic City the night before a play-off game. Michael was abruptly at war with the press again, and we never did play our match.