Don't stop at retiring Jordan's 23; there's Bird, Magic ...

LeBron James says he is going to stop wearing No. 23, and he wants the rest of the league to stop wearing it as well.

Apparently, it's not enough that Michael Jordan has been inducted into the Hall of Fame and has inspired a generation of kids to shave their heads and wear baggy shorts just to "be like Mike"; it's not enough that he has truckloads of money and six MVP trophies and every year somebody is prematurely tabbed as the "next Michael Jordan," and he is a world-wide brand, and his statue stands outside the Chicago arena.

He deserves more recognition than that, according to James.

"I just think what Michael Jordan has done for the game has to be recognized in some way — soon," James explained. "There would be no LeBron James, no Kobe Bryant, no Dwyane Wade, you name all the best players in the league right now and the last 10 years, there would be none of us without Michael Jordan."

Actually, there would be no Michael Jordan if there were no Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, so let's stop the wearing of Nos. 33 and 32 as well. If those two hadn't come along, the NBA would be, well, the NHL or, worse, the MLS.

And there would have been no Bird and Magic if not for Cousy (14), Mikan (99), Bradley (24), Bing (21), Baylor (22), Abdul-Jabbar (33), Robertson (1) and many more.

Where do you draw the line for retiring numbers?

James says he will switch to No. 6, which was worn by his other favorite player, Julius Erving. But why not retire No. 6? Dr. J did much for the NBA and the ABA as a player and an ambassador. He helped make the dunk popular. He's had two different numbers retired — 6 with the Sixers, 32 with the Nets.

The Celtics' Bill Russell wore No. 6, too. All he did was win 11 world championships as a player and a player/coach — almost twice as many as Jordan.

While we're at it, the league should retire No. 13 for Wilt Chamberlain, who changed the game and set records that will never be broken. He's had his jersey retired by three different teams. Nobody should forget the clash-of-the-titans meetings between Russell and Chamberlain and what it meant to the game.

Jerry West's No. 44 has got to go to mothballs, too — they put his likeness on the NBA logo. That must be worth something.

Only two players in the major professional sports have had a league-wide retirement of their numbers: Wayne Gretzky's 99 by the NHL and Jackie Robinson's 42 by Major League Baseball.

But drawing the line at those two — or anywhere, for that matter — seems arbitrary. Kenny Washington, Robinson's UCLA teammate, broke the color barrier in the NFL. Why not retire his No. 13?