When Michael Jordan’s two-year contract to play basketball for the Washington Wizards expired at the end of the 2002-03 season, it was assumed by many that Jordan would be asked to return to his role as the Wizards’ president of basketball operations and de facto general manager – a position he held for a season and a half prior to returning to the court. Instead, then-Wizards owner Abe Pollin informed Jordan that he would not be returning to that post with the franchise. Feeling used, Jordan literally sped away from the Wizards in his Corvette, never to return to the league as an active player. To hear Kobe Bryant tell it, Pollin and the Wizards lost out on their best chance to make Bryant Jordan’s heir to the mediocre Wizards’ throne. Kobe would have signed with the Wizards to work under Jordan in a mentoring program of sorts had MJ stayed around as GM. Bryant, a free agent in 2004, confirmed as much in an interview with the Washington Post’s Michael Lee that was published on Monday : According to two people with knowledge of the situation, after Jordan decided to sell his minority ownership stake to resume his playing career with the Wizards, Bryant informed him several times he wanted to play for the Wizards — under the assumption that Jordan would return to the front office once his playing days were over. […] “That’s true,” Bryant confirmed recently. “A long time ago? Yeah.”                            […] “I’ve always been very big on having mentors, on having muses and I’ve been really, really big on that,” Bryant said. “Being around guys who have done it before and done it at a high level and always tried