It could be one of the biggest and most revenue-generating sports stories of the winter months. And America's sports scribes have already decided it's a done deal. "Make a decision already, Michael," the Chicago Tribune's Rick Morrissey wrote the other day. Then he added: "Let me amend that. Make an announcement, Michael."

Time magazine said recently that the question of whether Michael Jordan will make a professional basketball comeback next season with the Washington Wizards is the biggest decision facing the United States since last year's deadlocked presidential election. An exaggeration, perhaps, but an understandable one if the column inches the question has received in the Washington Post are anything to go by.

For months, Jordan, who became a part-owner of the Wizards in January last year and retired from basketball in 1998, has been playing a will-he-won't-he game with the US media, the basketball world and even with himself.

When Jordan does anything, he does it seriously, and the regime that he has been following to get his 38-year-old body back into the kind of shape where it could withstand the battering of an 82-game season is as closely guarded a secret as any Oscar award.

But it appears that Jordan is working in Hoops the Gym in Chicago with Tim Grover, his personal trainer since 1989. We also know, crucially, that Jordan has lost 20lb since the spring. And that he is again close to the 212lb (15st 2lb) he weighed when he last took to the basketball court with the Chicago Bulls in 1998, winning a sixth NBA championship in eight years.

As Angelo Dundee once said at the equivalent stage of Muhammad Ali's efforts to get back in shape after he was banned from the ring for refusing to go to Vietnam: "The bricks are all in place." It is nearly two years since Jordan edged his way back into what looked at the time to be the start of a entirely new role in basketball, sitting behind a desk in a suit as president of the Washington Wizards, one of the NBA's great underachieving franchises.

But then, earlier this year, there came the extraordinary news that Jordan was beginning to train with the team whose salaries he now paid. Word came that he was restless for action once again. "I've got to soothe it," he told friends.

Reports from the early pick-up games were exciting. They told of skills unimpaired, that Jordan still had the dribble of a wizard. "He won't let you outplay him or out-think him. He still has it," confirmed Penny Hardaway of the Phoenix Suns. "No standing and watching," Jordan would shout at his awe-struck team-mates. "Move."

Then, in May, reality seemed to get a foot in the door. Jordan reported some back spasms. In June, the news got worse. Jordan had broken two ribs in a scrimmage with the Bulls' forward Ron Artest. But within three weeks, half of the medically-prescribed six, Jordan was back playing again, harder than ever, this time with his ribs protected by a flak jacket.

Until two weeks ago, Jordan allowed the world to speculate about his plans. "I'm just trying to fly under the radar for a while," he said. Then, on July 18th, playing in a celebrity golf tournament near Chicago, he finally said something specific to a group of reporters who had again bombarded him with "The Question".

"Give me another month and a half," Jordan said. "Middle of September." Then, in a television interview the same week he said: "If you asked me today to make a decision, I would not play, because I still have so many question marks about myself physically."

When anyone else says things of that kind, they can be taken at face value. Sure, maybe he will and maybe he won't. But when Jordan makes such remarks it is important to remember that he is one of the greatest geniuses at orchestrating his own image that the US sports world has ever produced. Until Tiger Woods usurped him, no one did it better than Jordan.

A Jordan comeback would be a huge risk for a man whose sheer class and self-awareness were always essential dimensions of his greatness. And a comeback for the Wizards, a team which few observers think capable of reaching even the play-offs, would have a quixotic quality which has always seemed alien to Jordan's fanatical approach to success.

If Jordan returns, it is rumoured, then the great Charles Barkley might join him at the Wizards. Teenage protege Kwame Brown, whom the Wizards signed as this year's number one NBA draft pick, may also play alongside Jordan.

"He is in fighting trim," says the Tribune's Morrissey. "He's playing basketball again, despite two broken ribs. Nike maximum leader Phil Knight is rubbing his hands over future profits.

"Just say it. I'm back."