Michael is floating, walking on the air. In classic form, his tongue teases Horace Grant, who’s left his feet and can’t know he’ll forever be a victim. The forgettable Orlando Magic player can only watch.

Posterized.

I still remember the day my grandfather and I hung my first Michael Jordan poster on the wall of my bedroom.

I was 7, and I’ve obsessively stared at the thing wondering how the play ends for 14 years. Was it a vintage MJ up and under? A thunderous two-handed reverse dunk?

The possibilities with Jordan were always endless. That’s how I remember his game.

When my father told me just before I was about to attend high school that we’d be moving from my childhood home in Highland Park, Ill., to a south-shore suburb of Long Island, N.Y., MJ came with me. He found a new home on my new wall, and that moment never changed. MJ still hung in the balance of time, deciding the best way to torture Grant.

That poster now sits on my bedroom wall in college, three months from graduation and the beginning of the next chapter of my life.

I’d been waiting for that moment to hit, the graduation nostalgia. When I realized I needed to chug the milk because the expiration date was just around the corner.

Last week, when ESPN began airing its coverage of Michael Jordan’s 50th birthday, it all seemed a bit overblown. At first I accepted the coverage as another casualty of the 24/7 news cycle. I figured it was a chance to show some classic clips during a slow news day. I wasn’t necessarily complaining.

But then coverage kept coming. It seemed incessant. Why weeklong headlines for a birthday? Even if it is MJ’s.

It didn’t hit me until I read Wright Thompson’s profile on Jordan. ESPN’s stud scribe travelled to Charlotte, N.C., where he picked the brain of The Greatest Basketball Player of All Time, as Jordan pushes into the next era of his life.

Jordan told Thompson how different he feels at 50. Ten years removed from his last NBA game, he’s learning to appreciate that which he glossed over in his playing days.

There’s a great scene in the article where Jordan sits on the floor of his closet desperately trying to remember the code to his safe. He’s leaving Chicago for Charlotte permanently and needs to pack up his Highland Park home, the same one my friends and I frequented on Halloween, when MJ and I had just become roommates.

He has one more attempt before the safe seals, or else the door will need to be blown off with explosives to recover the contents of the box. Jordan types in his birthday, the most normal and simplest of passwords, and the door pops open to reveal his 1984 Olympic Gold Medal. He stares at it and then becomes obsessed with finding all of his accolades. He goes mad trying to find his championship rings, which have scattered all throughout his house. He’s neglected his priceless memories for so long, and now as he moves on to the next chapter of his life, he NEEDS them. He finally uncovers his rings, his symbols of his past, and he says goodbye to the city he loves.

That’s when nostalgia finally set in for Michael Jordan. That’s when I realized Jordan and I were at similar points in our lives.

Whether we like it or not, we all have to leave this place. College is as much a mental comfort as it becomes a physical home, and no matter how well positioned your future, there’s uncertainty. That can be scary. Hell, I’m terrified.

If MJ can teach me anything, it’s to collect my rings and cherish them.

As I grew older, I learned Jordan the person was never the role model I was looking for. He punched his teammates in practice and became obsessed with winning even when it pushed those closest to him away. Like many, I found what I was looking for in my parents and grandparents.

MJ is an icon, and for that we can all be nostalgic about his birthday. He’s our childhood. No matter how big a sports fan you were growing up, “Like Mike” was stuck in your head at some point and a VHS of “Space Jam” more than likely shared some quality time with your VCR.

I still remember the first time I saw MJ at Assembly Hall, when his son Jeff was still on the Illinois basketball team. Everyone saw him. You could look out into the crowd and at any point six people in your section had their eyes fixated on him. Dead ball conversations were dominated by “Holy smokes, I still can’t believe MJ is here.”

He means something to people. He’s our past. And now he’s 50. That means something about where we are in our lives, so it’s the perfect time to collect our rings and move on.

People talk about Jordan religiously. They don’t want to hear anything negative about No. 23. The other day, my friends and I joked about another MJ return, and the mere mention of his comeback with the Washington Wizards caused those in the room to shudder. LeBron James is working on one of the single greatest stretches of basketball I’ve ever seen: He’s recorded seven straight 30-point games dating back to the beginning of February. When talk shifts to James’ game, Jordan lovers alike speak like it’s untouchable to Jordan’s. It’s not that we’re necessarily selective. Jordan is iconic.

I had the fortune of meeting another icon recently. While some might only know Tal Brody as Illinois’ most recently enshrined jersey at Assembly Hall, those in Israel regard him as their Michael Jordan. At a Jewish National Fund event at the I Hotel in Champaign before Brody’s jersey raising, I had the chance to talk with some Israelis that watched him play during the 1977 EuroCup, when the democratic State of Israel in Lake Placid fashion defeated the communist Soviets to shock the entire continent.

Aviton and Doron Tidhar are brothers. As kids, they used to pass out pamphlets for local businesses, scrapping together just enough cash to see Brody play with Maccabi Tel Aviv.

You know that face when Chicagoans reminisce about Jordan? They get lost. You can see them dialing back the pin-point jumpers and gravity-defying dunks. The Tidhars had that same confident smile, that glint in their eye, when they reminisced about Brody’s game. It was like they knew him personally, yet they still nervously asked Brody for an autograph after he spoke at the event.

He’s an icon for them. An idea. A part of their life that brought happiness.

He’s one of their rings.

Over winter break, I was on the driving range of a Florida golf club where Jordan is a member. I turned to my father and rhetorically asked how cool it would be if MJ pulled up in a golf cart, Cuban tucked in his mouth, and planted his clubs right beside ours to hit a few.

I stopped hitting.

What would I even do in that situation?

I wouldn’t want to be a bother, but how do you not say something to someone who helped shape your life?

Do I drop my club, start flapping my arms and bust out some ‘I believe I can fly’? I considered it, then realized it might sound dumb without an awesome gospel choir behind me.

Do I challenge him to a closest-to-the-pin contest, knowing full well MJ has a gambling problem? Seems cruel, and he’d clearly beat the pulp out of me.

In all honesty, I think I’d just hit my balls, holster my clubs, say, ‘Thanks, Mike’ and walk away. I’ll keep him as a ring in my pocket, a poster on my wall and a nostalgic memory of how I became who I am today.

That MJ poster is coming with me to the next stop on the journey, whether it be in spirit or flesh.

Now I just have to figure out how I plan on teasing Horace Grant.

Ethan can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @AsOfTheSky.