TUPELO - Greg Neisler still has the gum he was chewing when Michael Jordan took his final dribbles in the NBA.

It's tucked inside a can that sits in a mini-fridge, which itself is part of a room that Neisler calls his "Jordan museum." But when you walk into the room, it's not the mini-fridge that first gets your attention.

More eye-grabbing are the 149 8-by-10-inch photos of Jordan, 13 pair of Air Jordan shoes and 11 commemorative plates. He also has binders filled with about 2,000 Jordan trading cards, Wheaties boxes featuring the superstar's image and magazines with his Airness on the cover.

Posters of MJ are protected by Plexiglas on the room's floor. Life-size cutouts stare from the walls of a room painted red with black trim, the colors of Jordan's Chicago Bulls.

"Every year for Christmas, I only ask for something I can put in my Jordan room," Neisler said.

But perhaps it's the mini-fridge that best reflects Neisler's passion for the man considered by many to be the greatest to ever play basketball. The bottom compartment contains red, blue and orange Gatorade bottles bearing Jordan's face, with 23 of each color to honor the legend's jersey number.

The upper compartment contains not only the gum from 2003, but also trading cards commemorating each of Jordan's six NBA titles won with the Bulls.

"I'm keeping him on ice," said Neisler, who has worked in the shipping department at Lane for the last 14 years.

The 39-year-old remembers when Jordan was playing for the University of North Carolina in the early 1980s. But his real interest began in 1991 when Neisler graduated from high school and Jordan won his first NBA title.

"I watched him on TV, and it would put something in you," he said. "Just watching him play with grace ... The way he did everything was amazing. I watched every one of his games I could watch."

Just ask his wife of 17 years, Kim, who once called her husband during a Bulls game to tell him she had a flat tire. Greg said he would help her - after the game was over.

She wasn't aware of her husband's passion when the two got married, but has seen it grow through the years and watched the Jordan room take shape after the couple moved into their four-bedroom home in 1999. She now begins her Christmas shopping for him in August or September, trying to find memorabilia he doesn't already have.

"That is something he likes," she said, referring to her husband's shrine to Jordan. "If we didn't have it, it wouldn't be a big loss for me, but it is something he has and enjoys. After 17 years, I'm good to go with it.

"I'm glad that is all he is into. There could be worse stuff."

The couple named their oldest son Dominic and their youngest, you guessed it, Jordan, although he also goes by Logan.

"I've always liked the name Jordan," Kim Neisler said. "I didn't have a problem with it, even though I knew the only reason he wanted it."

Greg Neisler's collection began with a jersey and his first pair of Air Jordan shoes in 1991.

"It first started that if I'd see something, I'd buy it," he said. "Then I got really into it. It started looking better, and I couldn't have enough."

He's seen Jordan play twice but has never met him.

"That is my dream, to one day just meet him," he said. "I probably never will, but I would feel like a kid if I did."

Contact Chris Kieffer at (662) 678-1590 or chris.kieffer@journalinc.com.