And even if you do consider Jordan to be the greatest, which I personally do, that still doesn't mean that he was the most significant player in the history of the league, or even necessarily significant enough to justify that ruling. Look at Major League Baseball, for example: I don't think that anybody's going to make the case that Jackie Robinson was the greatest baseball player ever, but nobody's arguing against his number being retired, since he was, arguably, the most historically significant player in the history of Major League Baseball. I don't really follow hockey, but people whose opinions I respect that do say that Gretzky is the most significant player in the history of the NHL. What, aside from being great, justifies Jordan's number being retired? And, as I suggested before, if you're going to retire 23 league-wide because Jordan was great, then you need to also retire 6 (Russell), 13 (Chamberlain), 32 (Johnson) and 33 (Abdul-Jabbar).