Written Spring 2020 during Introduction to Sportswriting with Mike Wells
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Heading into the 1997-98 season Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls were seeking their second three-peat and their eternal place in NBA history as one of the best team’s the game has ever seen. During this journey, Jordan permitted a camera crew to follow him around for what ended up as his final season in Chicago and atop the NBA heap.
In the newly released 10-part documentary series “The Last Dance,” director Jason Hehir takes that final season’s never-before-seen footage and carefully weaves it in amongst hundreds of other clips and interviews in order to craft the narrative of Jordan’s career as it builds to his final pursuit of a championship in Chicago.
Interviews including praise from his most decorated peers, dazzling highlight dunks, silky midrange turnarounds and the plethora of hardware from Jordan’s legendary career all helped, Hehir, Jordan and his production company, Jump 23, try to solidify Jordan’s claim as the NBA’s greatest of all-time title.
But more valuable than the series’ take on the always raging greatest of all-time debate, is the series’ ability to give viewers a glimpse into Michael Jordan as a human and not singularly as a hardwood hero.
Viewers learn that MJ the person and MJ the legend and brand are two very different things.
Hehir showcases the celebrity and magnitude of Jordan’s fame well before the peak of his fame and winning.
From the day he first signed with Nike as a rookie he was an icon. “Air Jordan” had his own signature shoe as a rookie, not only that but he was getting paid like none before him.
“Back then the best guys might have gotten like $100,000 or so,” said Howard White, a longtime Nike executive, “and he got probably $250,000, they were like ‘you paid him what?’”
Jordan’s then-agent David Falk noted Nike hoped by the end of Jordan’s four-year contract to sell $3 million worth of Air Jordan shoes.
“In year one, we sold $126 million,” said Falk. In just his first year in the league Jordan had not only left an impression with his play but a massive, lasting one within the shoe industry as well.
By 1991 he had dethroned the NBA’s biggest villains, the “Bad Boy” Detroit Pistons, finally overcoming their “Jordan Rules,” and fully ascending to a hero status and winning his first championship.
A year later Gatorade made sure that whole country wanted to “be like Mike,” with a massively successful ad campaign featuring Jordan at its center.
The film gives viewers an idea of how MJ’s level of popularity transcended sport. At this point his image was pristine and fame fed his ego. MJ’s public image, as built by him, his sponsors and management, portrayed a laid-back, happy, and charismatic guy with a big smile and dope shoes.
It was impossible for Jordan to live up to his own mystique though, and “The Last Dance” does well to show MJ’s brand at the time is not entirely who he was.
Michael Jordan struggled with gambling, despite electing to dismiss it as another element of his obsession with winning.
“I have a competition problem, a competitive problem,” he said of his gambling.
“I enjoy it, it’s a hobby,” Jordan said in another clip “If I had a problem, I’d be starving. I’d be hawking this watch, my championship rings, I would sell my house. My wife would have left me, or she’d be starving. I do not have a problem, I enjoy gambling.”
Hardly convincing.
At least part was true, Jordan was wickedly competitive, and still is. In everything from basketball to tossing quarters in the locker room, to having the last laugh, he needed to win.
This trait drove Jordan to push everything to the maximum, from his gambling where he bets big, to the golf course where he shoots scratch, greatness was not an option for Jordan. He expected the same of his teammates
Jordan could never concede an inch. Sometimes he’d push too far even, such as his late-night casino run in Atlantic City before the ’93 playoffs or his numerous practice dustups with Bulls teammates throughout the years, Jordan was relentless.
Yes, Jordan’s competitive fire was key to his success, and it made him one of the greatest ever. He was the ultimate winner and savored big moments like few fans have ever seen.
That attitude could also make him an egotistical, and vindictive jerk too.
Some examples were understandable, like his feud with Isiah Thomas surrounding the Dream Team selection after years of deep-seated disdain for one another.
However, the series also shows Jordan’s intensity could go a bit too far, like when he leads his teammate Scottie Pippen on an international crusade to bully their young, soon-to-be-teammate Toni Kukoc out of the Olympic qualifier.
Viewers see more of this spiteful side of Jordan too from the way “The Last Dance” treats GM Jerry Krause.
While plenty of the film’s critiques of Krause are legitimate, particularly as they pertain to Jordan and Phil Jackson’s eventual departures from Chicago. The series’ opening half-hour is nearly a no holds barred roast of Krause, who passed away in 2017. An inappropriate treatment for the architect of those Bulls teams, Hall of Fame level executive, and man unable to defend himself.
Yet, not entirely unexpected for the unforgiving superstar.
“He was picked on an awful lot during this time by Michael and Scottie,” said “Jordan Rules” author Sam Smith about the relationship before the film cuts to Krause and MJ at a practice.
“Are those the pills to keep you short, Jerry? Or are those just diet pills” Jordan asks Krause mockingly in the clip in front of the entire team.
More than just some belittling though, Jordan and Jump 23, seem hellbent early-on in the series to diminish the late Krause’s role in any of those Bulls teams and their success.
“He was good, but not good enough to do it without Michael Jordan,” said author Mark Vancil speaking about the Krause-Jordan dynamic.
But is it not just as likely Jordan would not have accomplished what he did without Krause?
After all Krause was the man who went to Arkansas to scout, then eventually draft Scottie Pippen. He was the man who loved Tex Winter and decided to promote Phil Jackson. Krause was also the guy who maneuvered for players like John Paxson, Steve Kerr, Horace Grant and Bill Cartwright to accent the different demands of the league.
And honestly, maybe Jordan would have rendered history the same without Krause. He embodied winning. This series establishes how his competitive drive, supreme confidence and ability to lead a room were second to none. He deserves his status as the greatest.
But this film also illustrates, to Jordan, the Bulls had no role in allowing him to flourish into the greatest of all-time by paring him alongside Pippen, Dennis Rodman coach Jackson, and incredible role players to form one of the great teams of all-time.
No, in Jordan’s mind he was the Bulls, and none of it happens without him coming first in ’84 to exude “his Airness” across America and begin his pursuit of greatness while demanding all those surrounding him follow his cutthroat lead.
The real truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. But the truth in “The Last Dance,” is the former because it is how MJ thinks and that’s how MJ wanted to make his movie.
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