And just like that…it’s all over. The ten episodes of ESPN’s acclaimed docuseries titled “The Last Dance” that aired for five straight weeks came to an end Sunday night and while old fans were able to dig up some of their freshest memories with the reminder of what it took for Michael Jordan to captivate the sporting world for more than a decade while leading his Chicago Bulls to six titles, young fans not too keen on Jordan’s extensive legacy were able to be brought up to speed on just what made Mike the G.O.A.T.
And in all fairness, I gotta hand it to ESPN. Everyone is stuck on their couches, practicing social distancing in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis without any noticeable sporting event taking place. The Worldwide Leader in Sports was able to succeed in what their job description tells – entertain the masses with fables of incredible feats in athleticism, both in the present and past.
To think, Jordan had concealed these almost mythical tapes for 22 years, and for ESPN to move up their release date for this series – normally set in June had the NBA Playoffs and Finals not been halted due to a global pandemic – just shows how sports are so dearly missed in our current world so ravaged by fear and uncertainty. To see how globally enjoyed this documentary has been an indication of how humanity is impacted by the world-changing power of sport.
That being said, historic documentaries such as this fulfill a couple of purposes: 1.) to (either) ignite or dampen any flames of debate over who is the greatest player of all time, and 2.) to teach how different styles of leadership and being a good teammate factor into just how successful or dysfunctional a faction can become. Every episode of this solid series detailed the arduous path to the many championships and accoladed achieved by the Chicago Bulls in the 90s and depicted their eventual breakup. It gave its followers some nuggets to take away and here, I’ll give you my ten takeaways from the series as a whole.
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1. Greatness is a habit that doesn’t come overnight.
AP
Take it from “His Airness” himself: he wasn’t born with it, and it wasn’t supposed to be easy out of the gate. As told in the debut of his already legendary docuseries, growing up with four other siblings and constantly competing for what looked like his father’s affection through obtaining the satisfaction that came with winning was his motivation as he grew up.
That obsession with wanting to be the best propelled Mike into the mindset of becoming that Uber-competitive hoops savant – and psychopath – we’ve admired for decades. Example: remember when MJ spoke on his experience getting placed on his junior varsity team to “be developed more?” Turns out that getting relegated to the lower tier Laney Buccaneers Men’s Basketball team was one of the greatest things to ever happen to him.
Let’s not cut out some facts here: Mike was a lanky 5-foot-10, 150-lb 15-year old who wasn’t as skilled with the rock as we’d eventually come to know him to be. But it was telling enough to see how quickly he internalized the fact that nothing was going to just be handed to him, and since rejection was MJ’s greatest motivator, he dedicated himself to the grind and averaged not only a triple-double for every game but 40 points a game as well for the Laney Buccaneers the following season. He’d earn McDonald’s All-American Game honors and the rest was history.
Add an AP National Player of the Year award, the guile to knock down a game-winner on the huge stage of a national championship, and a top-3 draft selection after three amazing years at UNC to a legacy that would obviously contain so much more as it progressed.
Which brings us to Number #2 on our takeaways list…
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2. If you wanted to bring out the best in him…never tell Michael Jordan that he couldn’t do something.
As it pertained to Mike’s demeanor as a classy competitor both on and off the floor (thanks to the help of Deloris and James Jordan Sr.), it was like a reflex to exude professionalism, and that he did once he set foot on that old campus in Chapel Hill. His three years at college refined his game, and North Carolina legend Dean Smith saw that fire to be better than anyone and everyone else on the floor in Jordan’s eyes.
But just hearing how scintillating the feeling of losing and inferiority made MJ was felt when he talked about it. I mean, it was as if we as viewers were breaching into a therapy session, the way he talked about his passion to leave his mark on everything he encountered, dating back to feeling like the only way he could be embraced by his father’s affection was by competing for it as a child amongst a house with four other siblings.
He said it himself: “It drives me insane when I canât [win].â And âIf youâre trying to maintain dominance over somebody, you donât want to do anything to give them confidence.â
Mainly evident during his rookie season in 1984, he noticed this negative aura around the team as a fresh-faced rookie, and frankly, there was this loser’s mentality coursing through the air. In fact, that team, regarded as the “Bulls Traveling Cocaine Circus” was just as unsuccessful off the court as they were playing.
The team’s unhealthy use of recreational drugs, and moreover, them willingly dismissing just how good they could be if they chose to defy mediocrity just fueled MJ to not conform to those rookie expectations. He then became one of five rookies in NBA history to average 25-5-5 while one season later propelling that same Bulls team to the playoffs, in which he scored 49 and 63 points, consecutively, against the eventual champion Boston Celtics in 1985.
Manny Millan/Sports Illustrated
Did I mention, he defied all doctoral logic by having a literal vendetta against a prognosis of a broken foot, vying to come back to will those Bulls to the playoffs after missing a total of 64 games? The word ‘no’ wasn’t in his vocabulary. Take that, load management!
Even down to his decision to play baseball upon his first retirement, there was something in Mike that wouldn’t allow him to be below average. Maybe it had to do with the media constantly doubting his abilities to produce in a sport he hadn’t played in since he was 17. MJ’s work ethic was so strong, that he finished his baseball career batting .202 with 52 runs batted in against players who competed on baseball’s highest stage.
That’s just what the great ones do.
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3. No, Jordan didn’t play against “plumbers”.
Virgil Villanueva/ClutchPoints
So we can finally dispel this useless argument nauseatingly regurgitated by trolls on Twitter, right? Mike and his Bulls had to overcome a lot in order to reach that pantheon of all-time sports greats, and as we all know the story it was anything but a cakewalk. From that well-oiled machine known as the Celtics in the mid-80s, the stacked Cavaliers in ’85, the bully ball Bad Boy Pistons and mutually rough Patrick Ewing-led Knicks in the midst of the 90s, nothing came easy in a time where the entire NBA, not just the East but what was outside of it in the Finals.
But while we’re on the topic of the adversity in the East, His Airness had ions of trouble getting in the air, thanks to those roughhouse Detroit Pistons who ended up conquering the Bulls near the end of the 80s and winning two championships.
Whether it was Bill Laimbeer or John Salley patrolling the paint, prohibiting MJ from showing off his acrobatics, or the tandem of Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars tiring him out on the offensive end by being just as efficient of a scorer as Mike, the Jordan Rules (AKA the established set of principles restricting Mike from the baseline, trapping him on the low block, taking away his right and clipping his wings if he ever won middle and got into the paint) successfully vanquished MJ for two straight seasons.
The third season wouldn’t tell the same story, of course. It took an offseason of gritty work not only for Michael, who ended up putting on 17 additional pounds of muscle to protect that formerly lanky build against the physical Pistons but the organization as a whole. The entire mindset of the team switched when they lost to Detroit in 7 in 1990, and they switched up their gameplan to Tex Winter’s signature Triangle offense to spread the ball around to the likes of Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Scott Burrell, John Paxson, and others.
Their new gameplan worked, and in 1991 they were able to sweep those Pistons…only to run headfirst into Magic Johnson and the Los Angeles Lakers. Fortunately, they won their first title in five games, and for the next seven years (barring his “retirement” in 1993) he’d be constantly matched up with Clyde Drexler one year later, and then reigning MVP Charles Barkley in 1993. All of which he won, and during his second three-peat, went against the tough Seattle Sonics duo of Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp, and then the Utah Jazz in both 1997 and 1998. Those Jazz teams included the likes of Jeff Hornacek, Bryon Russell, Karl Malone, and John Stockton.
So, yes, his path to multiple championships was just as hard as any legend who left their mark on the league as well.
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4. Phil Jackson deserves all the credit in the world for keeping his sanity amongst a group of clashing, dynamic personalities for that long.
Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images
And by that, I’m not just speaking out on the players around him, but the executives breathing down his neck in his last couple of seasons as the head coach of the Chicago Bulls.
Just the passive aggressiveness from Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf along with the disrespect of the late, egotistical former Bulls General Manager Jerry Krause (who, yes, was instrumental in bringing along the greatest faction in the history of sports) saying to you that “you could go 82-0 and we still wouldn’t bring you back next year” would set a majority of folks over the edge…but then you factor in all the off-court drama surrounding Dennis Rodman’s…escapades…in the turbulent 90s as well as those fiery practices that, more often than not, included a lot of physical and verbal abuse amongst the players, and you’d be driven up a wall.
That’s why it was so necessary to give the Zen Master his just due. We’ve quickly understood that giving people their flowers while they’re still here. This documentary took its time to profile Jackson’s ascent, starting with him helping the Knicks win their only two titles, and then beginning his coaching career in Puerto Rico. After spending time away from the States, he was hired as an assistant coach with the Bulls, but to then-head coach Stan Albeck’s chagrin, stating how he didn’t take kindly to how laid-back and “hippie-like” Jackson was.
As fate would have it, Jackson became the head coach of the Chicago Bulls two years later, and while the demise was sentimental, his time with the Bulls was legendary. But the constant disregard of how good of a job that Phil did was telling enough of what Jerry Krause truly thought of the infrastructure of his entire team. Evident in his disparaging remarks in 1998: “Players and coaches alone donât win championships â organizations do.”
Was it worth it to break it up at the end of it all, especially since the task of persuading the likes of Pippen, Kerr, Kukoc, Rodman, Jordan, and Phil Jackson to come back for a shot at the first-ever four-peat would’ve been easier than pouring water into a glass? The world will never know.
Speaking of Krause and the executive part of the Bulls organization…
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5. As Jerry Krause was credited for building the Bulls’ dynasty, he should be chastized as much for instigating its downfall.
Fred Jewell/Associated Press
If there was some universal truth that just about everyone who watched the documentary had, it was that Jerry Krause was, at the time of the debut of the series, the most-hated man in America. And from the beginning, we understood the tone of what Director Jason Hehir tried to convey: one of empathy for a power-hungry-but-misunderstood man who, albeit, projected his insecurities on others due to that Napoleon complex of his.
Having to hear derogatory comments about his height every day from MJ and the rest of his teammates was unnecessary but as it pertained to how Jordan and his peers saw it, he was incredibly envious of the credit Jordan, Pippen, and Phil Jackson received for Chicago’s success. And thus, the ongoing petty wars between himself and the Bulls led up to the toxic breakup in 1998, with Krause’s name tainted forever in Chicago sports infamy up until his untimely passing in 2017.
And yet, this is why it’s proverbial that personal matters should never bleed into the professional aspect. That wasn’t supposed to be on the side of Krause, for Scottie Pippen during his contractual dispute was to blame as well.
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6. Every Jordan needs a Pippen, but every Pippen needs good negotiation skills.
One of the more captivating subjects of the documentary dealt with just how severely underpaid Scottie Pippen was during his time with the Bulls. Think about it: a top-3 player in the league today would be at least earning north of $180-200M, so the mere thought of a first-rounder who accumulated six rings, three All-NBA First Team honors and seven All-Star selections making the 6th highest salary on the team he dominated with for almost two decades is preposterous.
It is understood that at its utmost convenience, that seven-year, $18 million deal with the Bulls took care of his family and offered some rain shed money to preserve in case of immediate injury. Little did he know he’d eventually earn a lot more coin, becoming the perfect Robin to Mike’s Batman through 11 magical years with one of the sports’ most storied franchises. Well, he didn’t get the coin he was expecting to get the moment after he negotiated that deal and even worse, his name was thrown in the hat of trade talks, courtesy of the petty Jerry Krause.
His frustrations during his contract negotiation made him put off his foot surgery, an operation that he could’ve had done and properly rehabbed in the offseason of ’98 in time for the season. As those talks further broke down, Scottie proclaimed that “The Bulls were not going to f–k my Summer up” and took matters into his own hands, publically berating Krause whatever chance he got, and ultimately sped up trade talks by requesting a trade himself. The Bulls not giving Scottie the money that he deserved earned them the reputation of being a cheap franchise and it was the first major domino to fall in the demise of the ’98 Bulls, a reputation that still holds to this day in playerâs minds.
However, we often use history as a lesson, not as a template for repetition. Scottie’s toxic contractual mishap was one of those lessons for young players who would grace the league for future generations, and the lesson taught there was that those players needed to get the best deal possible in their given market and understand the game of leverage when it comes to players on the payroll and how stingy owners can be with their money.
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7. Michael Jordan was a pioneer in athletes’ speaking out on social issues – by not saying a word on them.
This is by no means an indictment on Michael and his political stances, but rather an assessment of the perception of athletes who associate with those in marginalized communities. In 1990, Democratic nominee Harvey Gantt first challenged incumbent Jesse Helms in North Carolina for his U.S. Senate seat. Jordan, as that stateâs (and country’s) biggest celebrity, declined to endorse Gantt, an African-American who was Charlotte’s first black mayor, against an opponent widely considered to be racist.
Thatâs when a quote, ubiquitous and synonymous in history, trailed Jordan for years: âRepublicans buy sneakers, too.â
These days, if a certain LeBron James or Stephen Curry were to catch wind of a salient topic in the news – whether it be protesting police brutality, voting for your desired presidential candidate or speaking out against injustices in your communities – they’d voice their opinions to evoke change in a heartbeat, without any noticeable fear of pushback from prognosticators and opposing media alike.
A true contrarian to that rule, Michael wasn’t always that guy to speak out on the topics he may not have been too informed on, or simply felt out of place in speaking about. No matter how larger than life the cultural icon known as MJ was, politics and social justice weren’t really his strong suit.
But much like Scottie’s contract, we learn from history so we don’t make the same mistakes our predecessors made. The examples of Mike not wanting to invoke his political standpoint for fear of losing that neutrality among his fanbase inspired the next generation to be leaders in their community, and not be so fearful of backlash.
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8. Mike had, in his words, a “competition problem”.
That was Jordanâs way of explaining what some assumed was a gambling addiction. But it was way, way more than just that.
Mike took every loss personally, no secret about that. You could still say that the feeling of inadequacy dates back to wanting to feel his father’s affection and you’d be right to a degree, but that psychopathic, and otherwise addictive need to win, pushed Mike to feel like he needed to beat you in every way.
In the NBA, it started with his obsession to get back on the court after missing those 64 games, with this burning desire to reject notions from both doctors and media folk saying he wouldn’t be able to get back in time to get the Bulls into the playoffs. And then it was the case of him being a first-timer in the playoffs who they said he wouldn’t be able to offensively produce against Larry Bird’s Celtics in ’85.
And then, it was years later in 1989 against Cleveland, with those same media experts who said Mike was outmatched against Mark Price and Craig Ehlo. After that, it was the Bad Boy Pistons from ’88-’91 who believed deep down they had the mental edge over him when they implemented those Jordan Rules.
And what happened with those predisposed expectations, you ask? MJ defied all of those odds. He led the Bulls to the playoffs in 1985. He led them in scoring, dropping 49, and then 63 in consecutive playoff games in that first round against Boston. Years later, he drained “the shot”, promptly supplanting himself into history books over Ehlo. And we know what happened to those Pistons, who felt like they finally conquered His Airness before the 90s began.
And the need to feel that superiority didn’t stop there. They won in 1991 against the Lakers in 5, and one year later, the same media made those disparaging comparisons between himself and Clyde Drexler. And that just set him off. Again, MJ felt like he needed to beat you in order to feel normalcy in his head, and therefore “The Shrug Game” (six threes in the first half against Portland in the 1992 Finals) became a result of that uncomfortable feeling with playing second fiddle to anyone.
Later tales included the 1992 Dream Team’s legendary practice and beating Magic Johnson’s trash talk, embarrassing future teammate Toni Kukoc on the national stage (since he was perceived as the surrogate for Bulls GM Jerry Krause who fawned over the Croatian Sensation while he still had the GOAT and Pippen chasing down championships for him), ripping apart fierce defender Dan Majerle in the Finals a year later, and even the made-up La’Bradford Smith story involving MJ fabricating a tale of the Bullets guard telling Mike to “lace them up, for it was going to be a long night”. The guy was obsessed with winning.
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9. He couldn’t lose in those shoes.
So yes, Mars Blackman from “She’s Gotta Have It”, it was the shoes.
Talk about leaving a cultural imprint.
Now, some old Converses that Magic and Bird sported on the hardwood would’ve sufficed for the greatest player of all time. And yet, The Air Jordan I and all the variations that came after in his association with Nike propelled him to a level of business success and global expansion that we’ll likely never see topped by an athlete of that magnanimity ever again. If I had to put it into a picture of how significant the Jordan brand is to basketball culture and to the world…
…Well, just know we here at Sneaker Reporter or a ton of other mediums that deeply cover the kicks game probably wouldn’t exist without Michael Jordan’s large investment that was almost deemed illegal by the league in Jordan’s earliest beginnings.
More importantly, the world’s fascination with athletic footwear fashion wouldn’t have propelled itself into the stratosphere had it not been for MJ, who almost never signed with Nike in the first place. His own mother, Deloris Jordan, was the main persuader to get Michael to trust then upstart Nike Basketball other than MJ’s favorite brand Adidas to make a shoe for him.
And the rest was history.
Jordan and Nike had unveiled the shoes in a November 1984 game at Philadelphia in Jordanâs rookie year. But, not everyone took a liking to his controversial new shoes. The NBA took offense at the individualism in the shoe companyâs packaging of the new star and threatened the Bulls and Jordan with a $5,000 fine for every game he wore them.
And thus, fans of Jordan craved more. The AJ1 “Banned” sneaker became that individualistic memorabilia that every man, woman, or child who admired his game needed to have, and so they came out in droves to buy the ones. Nike’s stock rose higher than Mount Kilimanjaro in the 80s and 90s, and rightly so, it was the first time that a tennis shoe would become a true artifact left for the legacy of humanity to remember.
There’d be no Nike signature shoe lines for the best players, no PE colorway for some of the league’s most interesting personalities, and no outward reach to improve the footwear in other sports worldwide like football, baseball, soccer, golf or tennis without MJ’s paving of the way in the 15 years he spent as the leader of the Chicago Bulls.
And moreover, Jordans became, and really will always be, a fashion statement! Before MJ, the NBA had a tough time selling on-foot products to their demographic because, at the time, the converse commercials featuring Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were the only true way to pitch the idea of buying shoes designed for basketball. Nike and the Jordan Brand became the first to bridge the gap between sport and everyday wear, and who would have thought how successful the brand flourished throughout his career.
“Nike’s expectation when we signed the deal was at the end of the year four they hoped to sell $3 million worth of Air Jordans. In year one we sold $126M,” said David Falk, Michael Jordan’s agent for his entire career.
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10. Michael Jordan changed the way we view athletes in the limelight.
AP Photo/Tim Boyle
We know how great he was. We know how transcendent he was. We know how globally impactful he was to not only sports but in a sense, humanity as a whole.
The mountains he had to climb just coming into a league anemic of any other major star power than Bird and Magic and the skill of adaptability he had to learn quickly standing at 6-foot-6-inches in a league so enamored in its affinity with big men were some of his most commendable features when looking closely at what made Michael great.
In his draft class, he’d be selected third overall before two bigs in Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Bowie and was forced to devise a scheme based on quickness, dexterity, agility, and athleticism, seeing as how it would have been difficult to play amongst the height-proficient bulk of the league’s players.
The skill it took for MJ to branch out from the stoic, archaic style of play in a league where spacing wasn’t so easy to create off the dribble took the sport to new heights, shifting the game from strength, height, and power to that of finesse and speed. His work ethic and desire to be as great as he could be made other players from across the league dream of playing with him, no matter how domineering and cold he was toward them in the efforts of making them better.
Jordan’s play in his twenty years as a pro would soon become the benchmark for play at the two-guard position to this day, in ways relating to skill and how players break down the game in their minds.
As it related to how Jordan was perceived outside of the Madhouse on Madison, Michael Jordan was the glaring example of how cultural perception is altered by the many mediums that cover god-like figures in sports. We saw how the world fell in love with the guy who could literally and figuratively fly on the basketball court, as shown in MJ’s distinct ability to make the game go global with just his aura alone. During the holy crusades of the 1992 Dream Team, packs and packs of humans flocked to Michael wherever he went as if he was the fifth member of the Beatles.
He was an advertising goldmine for companies like McDonald’s and Gatorade in the 90s and his face alone sold billions, as well as max out box offices around the world with his acting debut in Space Jam. Every demographic was affected by Mike’s game in one way or another, and (maybe) other than LeBron James or the late Kobe Bryant, we’ve yet to see someone replicate that kind of outreach.
But as a contrast, MJ’s time in the league showcased the ugly, dark, and cruel part of sports journalism. That part where speculation, conspiracy, harassment, disregard, and media framing all played an integral part in not only giving the avenue of retirement for Michael in 1993 shortly after the death of his father but the sunset to sports’ last great dynasty of the 20th century.
It’s the job of media members to impulsively report on the first news they hear, but it comes at the cost of risking credibility. Historians of the game witnessed that firsthand during Jordan’s tenure with the Bulls, starting with that book known as “The Jordan Rules: The Inside Story of a Turbulent Season with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls” written in 1992 by Sam Smith that chronicled the Chicago Bulls’ 1990â91 championship season, and how fallacious a majority of its tellings were.
And then there were the stories of Michael’s “gambling addiction” and the conspiracies written about him during the time of his father’s death, and if the two stories correlated to one another when he decided to honor his father by stepping away from basketball to play James Jordan Sr.’s favorite sport, baseball. Columns then broke about whether or not MJ had an unpaid debt that ended up in his father’s roadside murder in Wilmington, North Carolina, but these times showed how unconscious those paying the closest attention to Michael’s actions were and the poor judgment of the character of a human being that captivated the very earth he walked on.
But, thanks to this series, we got a bunch of audio from some of the most significant moments in NBA history, but none more impactful than his emotional release after Game 6 of 1996 Finals against Seattle, in which an inconsolable Jordan cried a mix of both grieving and joyful tears in the Bulls’ trainers room, clutching the game ball in his left arm, hiding his face from the flash of cameras, just letting out three years of pain from bereavement yet absolved from the sudden passing of his dad.
If this docuseries taught the viewer anything about media relations with professional sports organizations, its that while media members are a lot more sensitive and understanding of the line between when it’s morally justifiable to blur the lines separating professional and personal when breaking a story today, there are still journeys to be made in increasing the overall cognizant psyche of the journalist to not only report grabbing headlines but in a respectful manner that honors the integrity of all parties involved.
