Off court, a new life takes form for Michael Jordan.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Dan LeBatard

HONG KONG _ The view from all the way up here?

It costs $5,220 a night for this five-star hotel suite 26 floors above the harbor. It is 4,000 square feet and comes with a private gym, a Jacuzzi, a television in the marble bathroom and complimentary butler and Rolls-Royce service, if indeed anything at $5,220-a-night can be considered complimentary. The Peninsula Hotel's motto? ``Where luxury knows no limit and where the view goes on forever.''

This is how Michael Jordan lives, at the height of sports, on top of the world. But while his luxury may know no limit, Jordan knows, now more than ever, that his view most assuredly does not go on forever.

It's brutal entering mid-life, even when you haven't spent two decades as a symbol for youth, strength and flight. There is nothing quite so deafening for an athlete as the silence that follows a lifetime amid cheering, and few athletes ever, any sport, any time, have needed the feeling of being the tank's biggest shark the way Jordan did. Now that's gone, forever, and he's dealing with the loss. And, unlike basketball, it ain't easy for him.

He has always been gluttonous about his appetites, whether smoking 12 cigars a day, or playing 54 holes of golf before a playoff game, or gambling hundreds of thousands of dollars in all-night sessions, but nothing gave him the heroin-junkie high of owning the loftiest level of sport. ``Love of the game,'' is one of his favorite phrases, but Jordan didn't love basketball nearly as much as he loved winning at it, of being the best at it. He has searched Yao Ming-high and Earl Boykins-low, and he vigorously shakes his head no when asked if there is a replacement for that rush in retirement.

``I miss the game,'' he says, but that's not quite right.