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Jordan, Kareem and true American excellence


WASHINGTON -- With the clock running out, President Obama took one last shot.

The man who spent the morning of his historic election eight years ago playing basketball spent some time on his way out of the White House to pay homage to two of the sport's all-time greats.

Tuesday was about much more than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Michael Jordan, of course. Obama used his last presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony to honor 21 high-achieving Americans, from the woman whose computer programming enabled the Apollo program to land on the moon to the singers who have provided the soundtrack to our lives.

But through his selections, Obama placed two basketball players on the same level as all of them. It was the final salute to the sport from an administration that has embraced it more than any other White House occupant.

And after Obama vocalized his appreciation for each and every honoree, be it actor or architect, then draped medals around their necks -- and with the teleprompter turned off -- Obama took a turn toward the personal.

"These are folks who have helped make me who I am," Obama said.

Unlike the software of Bill Gates or even the songs of Bruce Springsteen, incorporating sports stars into American life is more optional than necessary. But if you care about basketball, Kareem and MJ were practically mandatory.

If you play the game, at some point you've probably laced up a pair of Air Jordans or dreamed of supplanting Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA's all-time leading scorer. Still, it wasn't just their athletic accomplishments alone that led them to that stage in the White House East Room on Tuesday. And no, it wasn't about their forays into acting, even though Obama felt compelled to shout out Jordan's movie "Space Jam" and Abdul-Jabbar's role in "Airplane" even as they sat with such distinguished actors as Robert De Niro, Tom Hanks and Robert Redford.

These medals are about impact. True American excellence.