The following isn’t to take anything away from what Phelps is doing - we’re watching, and the accomplishments/medals/records are way impressive. He’s really good at his swimming - the best ever.
BUT, when manager person starts saying things like, “Michael Phelps will have the same impact on the world with his swimming as Michael Jordan did with basketball,” we have to start throwing out lettered points of contra:
a) You can’t round up your buddies and go “play some swimming”. Even if you have access to a pool, you can hardly clear it out, set up lanes, and run races. Even if you could do that, then what do you do? “All right! 200m butterfly! Yeah! That lap was just like Phelps!”
b) Take away the clock and the green world record line, and would you have any clue if what he was doing was exceptional? When Jordan would do certain things, you just knew you were seeing something amazing that nobody else could do. Every single swimming race for all time looks exactly the same. Even world record setting ones - you’re talking fractions of a second.
d) Short freaky legs.
e) Imagine a kid coming into school with the new Jordans. Now imagine same kid coming into school with the new “Phelps swim tights”.