A shot of sublime vindication
‘Last Dance’ shows how Jordan found the drive to deliver dagger vs. Jazz
It was such a perfect moment, such a perfect shot, it really should have been the final, lasting memory of one of the greatest athletic careers we will ever see.
Michael Jordan shaking off Bryon Russell of the Utah Jazz, making a shot frozen in time to seal the sixth championship of the Chicago Bulls dynasty at the conclusion of the 1998 NBA Finals — the final shot of not only his career with the Bulls but also the gripping documentary “The Last Dance” that wound up early Monday morning on Netflix in Canada.
It, and the show, mix Jordan’s basketball brilliance with his ability to seize the moment and be driven to excellence at the most significant moments.
It was all of Jordan in one sixsecond span.
We knew that day in Salt Lake City that we were seeing the end of a true sports dynasty. The relationship between coach Phil Jackson and the Bulls was broken and could not be fixed. The relationship among Jordan, Scottie Pippen and general manager Jerry Krause was toxic.
Everyone seemed tired — of the mental grind, the physical toll, each other — and “The Last Dance” shows just how it got to that stage.
What it has done is put an even greater focus on the aspects of Jordan that even those of us on the periphery of his career knew: his almost pathological competitiveness; his need to find some slight, real or perceived, to fuel that drive; his sublime basketball talents. We knew it all, or at least thought we did.
The enduring impression having seen the series is that you may not like Jordan any better, but you might understand his pathology just a little bit and appreciate how he took motivation wherever he could find it.
Even that last shot as a member of the Bulls — a championship dagger that ended a 45point game and helped earn Jordan his sixth NBA Finals MVP award — was driven by some past snub.
In the penultimate episode, we learn that Russell has somehow slighted Jordan years before. While Jordan was off pursuing his baseball career, he stopped one day at the Bulls’ practice facility, where Russell and the Jazz were practising before a run-of-the-mill regular season game. Russell somehow joked that Jordan retiring had robbed him of a chance to stop the Bulls legend on the court, and it ate at him.
“From that point on, he’s been on my list,” Jordan says of Russell in the ninth episode.
That may be the greatest takeaway from the series: Jordan’s hyper-competitiveness and ability to use even the slightest perceived injustice to drive him.
The 10-part series, moved up from an original June release date because of the coronavirus pandemic that brought all sports to a halt, is much more than just a look at Jordan, though.
The poignancy of Steve Kerr talking about his father’s assassination is emotional. The tumultuous life of Dennis Rodman, the story behind the Detroit Pistons “Bad Boys” and the treatment of Krause give the series a depth that few could have imagined.
It is an examination of men and teams and how they grow and become this living organism — 10 hours of deep dives into people as much as games.
But at its heart, the reason it exists is Jordan.
I came late to closely chronicling Jordan and the Bulls, catching the last of the championships from a courtside seat — he would come out of retirement in 2001and play two more seasons in Washington. As “The Last Dance” so expertly shows, his was a forceful personality like few we’ve ever seen in the realm of sports. Simply being on the periphery of his last few years provided an upclose look at a man driven to win at whatever cost.
You could see it from arm’s length: his demanding nature and what it did to the other members of his team. They weren’t “afraid” of him, they weren’t in awe of him, but he wasn’t like anyone else.
You could sense it when he walked into a packed interview room. You could sense it when you saw him at the end of practice sessions. You could absolutely feel it when you saw him play. He was different. Just different from all the rest.
There are certainly holes in the project, omissions that are in some ways understandable given Jordan had the ultimate say in even airing the documentary.
It would have been nice to hear from someone other than his mother about his family life away from the game. The series maybe glosses over what was an addiction to high-stakes gambling, and his aversion to speaking out on social issues. Questions that would have been interesting to hear answered.
But as a look at Jordan the athlete, the teammate, the driven force, “The Last Dance” did not disappoint. And to his credit, he is more open than he’s ever been.
If there is one snippet from the entire production that sums up Jordan better than all others, it’s the final seconds of episode No. 7: An emotional Jordan, choking back tears as he finishes, talks about his style, his demanding persona, his willingness — almost a pathological need — to demand more of others than they might think they can provide.
“Winning has a price, and leadership has a price. So I pulled people along when they didn’t want to be pulled. I challenged people when they don’t want to be challenged. And I earned that right because my teammates came after me. They didn’t endure all the things that I endured. Once you join the team, you live at a certain standard that I play the game, and I wasn’t gonna take anything less.
“Now, if that means I have to go out there and get in your ass a little bit, then I did that. You ask all my teammates, the one thing about Michael Jordan was, he never asked me to do something that he didn’t f---ing do. When people see this, they’re gonna say, ‘Well, he wasn’t really a nice guy. He may have been a tyrant.’ Well, that’s you, because you never won anything. I wanted to win, but I wanted them to win and be a part of that as well.
“I don’t have to do this. I’m only doing it because it is who I am. That’s how I played the game. That was my mentality. If you don’t want to play that, don’t play that way. Break.” Not many will come away from “The Last Dance” liking Jordan very much. If there is one thing that comes through overall, it’s that he could be mean and caustic and biting and at times unfair. He knew it, and we thought it and had heard about it, but we didn’t realize how deep it ran and constant it was until we watched these 10 hours spanning almost two decades. The series shows just how ingrained it was in Jordan’s very being.
“The Last Dance” is a wonderful look at a complex man who was one of the greatest practitioners of his sport that there’s ever been. We knew a bit about how complex he was as his career unfolded. We are now sure of it.