Everything is right in what many thought would be a wrong world for Michael Jordan.

The Bald One is smiling again. He's joking about being Richard Hamilton's sidekick in his Third Coming, instead of the undisputed best player in the NBA. He even sat out the fourth quarter of the Washington Wizards' blowout victory over Atlanta on Wednesday -- just like old times.

At 7:30 tonight, Jordan plays his first game in Orlando since his return to the NBA, and the Wizards (12-12) will be going for their eighth consecutive victory. In fact, with Tracy McGrady nursing a lower back strain, they will be favored to win.

"I felt this team could play well, but I think we're surprising ourselves in terms of how everybody has fit into a role," Jordan told reporters in Washington on Wednesday night. "We're starting to excel, and we're doing it successfully on the road, and we're starting to exert some type of dominance here. I wouldn't say dominance, but some comfort here. It's a big growth for us."

If the season ended today, the Wizards would make the playoffs as the No. 7-seed in the Eastern Conference. They would be a spot ahead of the Magic (13-14), who were supposed to contend for the conference title but are now an average team with Grant Hill again out for the season.

Of course, the season doesn't end today, and the adventure figures to get considerably tougher for the young Wizards.

They join Boston (15-8) and New Jersey (16-7) as the teams that have turned the Atlantic Division upside down thus far. Include the surprising Detroit Pistons (14-9) of the Central, and the Eastern Conference has four new teams that already have gained enough confidence to be major factors as the season -- and playoff race -- progresses.

"Making the playoffs this year will be far more difficult than last season," Magic Coach Doc Rivers said. "It's not even close."

New Jersey, Boston and Washington are, in order, the top three teams in the Atlantic Division right now. They were the worst three teams in the division last season.

Injuries to Philadelphia (10-15) have helped those teams. The Magic were never right, even with Hill in the lineup, and now their arrival has been delayed another season -- and that's thinking positively. Miami began the season 2-14 and may never get out of the hole. Coach Jeff Van Gundy has resigned as coach of the New York Knicks.

All four of those teams qualified for the playoffs last season.

But the NBA season is still 82 games and much can change. The same Wizards that now look like playoff contenders lost eight straight earlier this season.

But what the Magic are dealing with is a division in which every team believes it is pretty good and an Eastern Conference in which only the Chicago Bulls, and possibly the Atlanta Hawks, have no hope.

"We're not going to jump the gun," Jordan said. "We're playing better, competing a lot harder, and we're trying to be smarter as a team, but I don't think we want to jump the gun and say we're one of the elite teams in the East."

The Wizards' success has been about several things. It is part Doug Collins' coaching, part rookie center Brendan Haywood's surprising play and part Hamilton's emergence into a star.

At the forefront there is Jordan, who is truly looking like a point forward, leading his team as much by his composure and basketball savvy as the skills he still possesses.

If the Wizards continue to progress, they figure to make it interesting in Conference Mediocre.

But the mediocrity is what makes it so interesting.

"We've had all this happen to us, and we're five games out of the top of the East," Rivers said.

"Thank God for the East."