Retire 23 For What?

So Lebron James tried to get the attention off of his 2010 free agency questions by starting another debate that's just as pointless. We all know if Shaq don't win a ring for the king Lebron will put himself in exile and flee to another team and if they at least get to the NBA finals he will stay for a couple more years nothing long term, but that's not the issue right now. Right now Lebron James said he is changing his number from 23 to his Olympic number 6 next year and he feels that no one else should be able to wear the number 23 in the league. Yeah right, and as I said in the title for what? Look Michael Jordan was a great player winning six NBA champions with six NBA finals MVP trophies, five NBA season MVP trophies and bunch of other accolades including all-star selections, all NBA and all NBA defensive teams. With all of these accomplishments and people saying how he transcended the game of basketball his jersey should not be retired through out the league. Did Michael Jordan become the first black player in the National Basketball Association? No. Did Jordan win more rings than Bill Russell? No. Did Jordan even surpass the Captain Kareem Abdul Jabbar on the all time scoring list? No. So why would we not retire their jerseys around the league, but retire Jordan's. Is it because he made Nike more prosperous than any other athlete or because he got everybody drinking Gatorade and they don't even play sports or maybe because he was the first basketball player to star in his own movie. Look either way it goes all of those have nothing to do with basketball. Micheal Jordan franchised himself not the NBA. I mean still to this day you see Jordan golfing doing Hanes commercials and now has other basketball players on his Jordan Brand label. All I have to say is that Jordan was one of the greatest players of my era with Bird, Magic, Barkley and Dominique Wilkins just like the era before mine had greats like Erving, Gervin, West and Dawkins and the greats before that such as Wilt, Russell and Cousy. All of these players I named and some I didn't name were great players and contributed greatly to the development of the NBA, but there is no way they're going to retire all of these people's jerseys. Lets just retire his jersey and give him a statue in Chicago which they did and do what Pat Riley did which is hang Jordan's retired Bulls jersey in the rafters. We can pay homage to Jordan in so many ways other than doing for him what they won't do for everyone else that we consider to be great.