In an article published in The Athletic, Michael Jordan remarked to director Jason Hehir that he was concerned their brand new docu-series “The Last Stand” will make him look like a “horrible person.” After watching eight chapters of the 10 episode series, you can understand his fear. Especially when you take into consideration the decades it took to craft an image and career that arguably made him one of the most famous athletes of the past 100 years.
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Compiled from new interviews with key basketball and cultural figures of his era, the ESPN and Netflix production uses Jordan’s last season with the Chicago Bulls (the “last dance”) to chronicle his rise from little known North Carolina high school player to global icon. Its secret sauce, however, is hours of unreleased behind-the-scenes footage (beautifully captured on super 16 mm film) of Jordan and his teammates during their bumpy road to a sixth NBA championship. This sort of footage is pretty commonplace today but was quite rare for a figure of Jordan’s stature 22 years ago. But before we dive too far into the program itself, let’s provide a quick history lesson in case your knowledge of the National Basketball Association is only that of a casual fan or you think of Jordan first and foremost as the star of “Space Jam” (and no “Space Jam” disrespect here, we stan).
A sports “dynasty” in the NBA is exceedingly rare. Most teams or players are lucky to win one championship let alone two or three. More than that? Well, that’s truly above and beyond. Of course, there have been a number of memorable dynasties in NBA history. Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics of the 1960s, the Magic Johnson-led Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s, the Tim Duncan-led Spurs from the 2000s and, arguably, the Golden State Warriors of the past decade. But, none of them had the cultural impact that Jordan’s Bulls did in the 1990s. The team won six titles in eight years including two sets of three-peats. No team had won three rings in a row since Russel’s Celtics and only the Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant Lakers have duplicated the feat since (under the guise of Phil Jackson who also coached the championship Bulls).
Jordan and the Bulls dominated the pop culture landscape and were must-see TV, but he was also the rare basketball player whose life also played out like that of a movie star. You saw him on the court and in his Spike Lee-directed commercials for Nike (“It’s gotta be the shoes!”) or Gatorade with its catchy “Be Like Mike” jingle, but Jordan private life was private. There were no Taco Tuesdays. He didn’t call into sports radio. He wasn’t appearing on talk the nightly shows if he didn’t have to. He didn’t become a guest commentator or studio analyst immediately following his career. So, despite numerous professionally crafted hype videos such as “Come Fly With Me” and “Air Time” there was always a mystique surrounding the real Michael Jordan. Moreover, his reign as the undisputed best player in the league (and world) ended right when the internet was truly exploding. Now, despite a plethora of youtube clips, there is a generation that simply cannot fathom why he’s universally regarded as the greatest player of all time. That’s why “The Last Dance” is more than just an entertaining dissection of one of the greatest soap operas in sports history.
Producer Mike Tollin and Hehir have spent four years crafting the series and almost no aspect of Jordan’s career is ignored. Oh, and there’s Michael Jordan the interview subject too. A reflective and as honest Michael Jordan as possible that will surprise many. That crying Jordan meme that’s proliferated on the internet the past few years? The tears don’t flow in “The Last Dance,” but it’s still startling when he comes close to it from time to time.
Despite its 10-hour length, “The Last Dance” has a lot of drama to cover. You thought the Shaq and Kobe Lakers feud was something? The Bulls put those childish spats to shame. How quickly many of us have forgotten the ego of then Chicago Bulls general manager Jerry Krause. A man who after watching his team win five rings in seven years convinced himself a “rebuild” was necessary. Clearly, Krause gets the credit he deserves for the moves he made putting the team together, but, boy, does the footage demonstrate the extent of his failure to understand or respect the players in his organization. In fact, Hehir and his team do a fantastic job of setting the stage for this conflict in the early episodes that do a semi-dive into the individual careers of Jordan’s key teammates, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman. It was arguably the distrust Krause fostered with Jordan and Pippen that led to so many conflicts on the team during their championship runs. As Jordan’s teammate at the time Steve Kerr tries to note softly, “Krause couldn’t get out of his own way.”
Of course, there are so many other storylines in the almost never-ending Bulls-melodrama. The murder of his father after their third championship. The speculative gambling rumors around Jordan’s shocking retirement in 1993 and his 18-month stint as a minor league baseball player. Pippen and Jordan’s torment of future teammate Toni Kukoc during the 1992 Olympics (tied back to Krause, of course). Pippen refusing to go into a playoff game in 1994 during Jordan’s absence. And all the slights – real and imagined – Jordan used to motivate himself against other teams and individual players almost receive too much attention. But it’s the new (or little known) details that truly pop.
Did anyone know that Jordan and Pippen still believe former teammate Horace Grant was the source for journalist Sam Smith’s tell-all book “The Jordan Rules”? Or how truly sensitive and petty Krause was behind the scenes? Maybe it’s the footage of the biggest stars in the league showing up to play pickup while Jordan was shooting “Space Jam” that will surprise you. Or the new footage that shows how nasty Jordan could be to his teammates in practice. Or that, even today, when he refers to portions of the season when both Pippen and Rodman were unavailable he describes himself as “alone” on the court (gotta make his other former teammates feel great, right?). The more the series plays on, the more you can see why Jordan might be worried about his reputation following its release.
There are other uncomfortable subjects, as well. Considering his stature, Jordan was notoriously criticized for rarely if ever taking a political stance. His lack of public support for the campaign of North Carolina Senatorial candidate Harvey Gantt in 1990 was particularly distressing. Gantt was an African-American Democrat who attempted to the unseat notoriously racist Jesse Helms in Jordan’s home state. The press ran with an off the cuff remark Jordan said jokingly to his teammates – “Republicans buy sneakers too” – as his stance on the showdown. It was a joke, but it played out in the media as his honest opinion. Jordan even admits his mother had to convince him to donate to Gantt’s campaign, but he never publicly endorsed him and Gantt lost a relatively close race. Even Barack Obama, one of a number of impressive interview subjects, says that as a young community organizer in Chicago at the time it made him uncomfortable.
It also becomes fairly obvious that Jordan’s global impact and life story is so rich you could arguably craft individual documentaries focused on key aspects of his life, Frankly, it’s puzzling what is actually missing. Almost zero attention is paid to Jordan’s actual basketball play or legendary training regiment (Jordan was one of the first players to have a private trainer year-round). His patented spin moves, hall of fame level defensive skills or that it was his decision to finally trust in his teammates as a facilitator that helped the Bulls win their first championship vs. Johnson’s Lakers in 1990. Considering how much time is spent on the other championship runs its somewhat head-scratching. And, it must be noted how little Jordan’s first wife and children are mentioned or even shown considering the focus on his father. Insinuate why that occurred at your own discretion.
Another strange aspect of the documentary is that it often tells you of Jordan’s pop culture impact as opposed to adequately showing it. Jordan’s ability to use his own shoe brand to become a billionaire is also pretty much ignored. It’s an achievement no other modern athlete has accomplished. But perhaps those are stories for another day. I mean, a sequel on Jordan’s forty-year-old comeback with the Washington Wizards and purchase of the Charlotte Bobcats, now Hornets, would be a unique bookend to “The Last Dance.”
But the footage is such a window into history that it’s fairly easy to give the filmmakers a bit of a pass for what’s not on screen. If you are under the age of 30 you likely have no memory of Jordan playing in the NBA or certainly not at his peak. Hehir and his editing team chronicle all the key moments with the appropriate historical background. The comeback wins. The game-winning shots. The rivalries with the physically dominant Detroit Pistons and the New York Knicks. Kobe Bryant or LeBron James may still be your favorite player, but you’ll understand why Jordan was theirs.
There are also moments that markedly demonstrate Jordan’s eternal confidence and why his peers feared him on the court. In Jordan’s last year with the Bulls, the faced an upstart Charlotte Hornets team in the second round of the playoffs. The Bulls were expected to sweep, but B.J. Armstrong, yet another former teammate, had a monster game and the Hornets won the second game. Jordan destroyed him in the third game and the Bulls easily won the series. But in a recent interview for the doc, Armstrong says it was his knowledge of the Bulls and playing with Jordan during the first three championships that helped the team pull off the upset win. Hehir gives Jordan an iPad to watch Armstrong’s assertion and Jordan begins to laugh. Let’s rephrase that. He laughs loudly without a hint of hesitation. He’s truly amused. And you realize that if 52-year-old Armstrong was brave enough to take the court and play the 57-year-old Jordan today he wouldn’t have a chance. [B+]
“The Last Stand” airs two episodes every Sunday night beginning April 18 on ESPN.
