Major League Baseball was in the middle of a strike. The National Hockey League was having a lockout. The O.J. Simpson trial was in full swing. And the world was just beginning to get over the astonishment that Tonya Harding’s husband and bodyguard put out a hit on fellow ice skater Nancy Kerrigan to try to help Harding win the 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

Jordan’s nearly 18-month sabbatical from basketball was done in a way that could only be imagined in the movies. It combined the right amount of coolness with just enough nonchalance.

If there had been an internet, he would have broken it. If Twitter had existed back in the day, he would have crashed the entire site. But all Jordan had at his disposal on March 18, 1995, was a simple fax machine, and he used it to announce not only to the sports universe, but the world: “I’m back.”