Michael Jordan, warts an’ all
If you’re my age, your love of sport is synonymous with Michael Jordan. Before Jordan, Generation X-ers had heard of Larry Bird, Julius ‘‘Dr J’’ Erving, Wilt ‘‘The Stilt’’ Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson. Maybe a sprinkling of others.
There wasn’t much NBA shown on Australian television, but those names were big enough to travel across the Pacific in the pre-internet world. But, as access to world sport exploded in the 1990s, Jordan was exploding as the No 1 athlete on the planet.
Carl Lewis was the man on the track, but we’d seen guys run 100m pretty fast before. Steffi Graf was peeling off grand slam after grand slam, but we’d seen players do that before.
What we’d never seen was a guy run in and leap from the free-throw line, suspend himself motionless as he flew through the air and dunk the ball. We pressed rewind and play on the VHS over and over, and could not believe what we were seeing.
We’d never seen a guy dominate a team sport with such smooth grace, effortlessly befuddling elite opposition.
When Jordan was playing, you stopped and watched. Just as you stopped and watched when Shane Warne was bowling, or Tiger Woods was in contention.
The world could not get enough of Jordan. Nike Air Jordans became a must-have. They were heady times.
Now, with world sport all but shut down, Jordan will this week become ‘‘the man’’ again.
During the Bulls’ run at a sixth title in eight years – and a second three-peat – a documentary crew followed their every move in 1998. All of them: Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Luc Longley, coach Phil Jackson . . .
For two decades, the footage lay dormant. Jordan isn’t a recluse, but he doesn’t follow, or need, the spotlight. While his brand is still enormous, he is absent from social media and his public appearances and utterances are relatively few and far between.
He decided, though, the time was right for a documentary series to be put together from the priceless vision. ESPN, whose documentary division makes the acclaimed 30 for 30 series, was entrusted with the project.
The result is a 10-part series, with 106 fresh interviews, titled The Last Dance.
Importantly, Jordan is front and centre. He was interviewed three times for it at length. And he’s warned fans, whose memories of him are of an unblemished superstar, they might not like everything they see.
‘‘When people see this, they are going say, ‘Well, he wasn’t really a nice guy. He may have been a tyrant’,’’ Jordan said.
‘‘When people see this footage, I’m not sure they’re going to be able to understand why I was so intense, why I did the things I did, why I acted the way I acted, and why I said the things I said. ‘‘When you see the footage of it, you’re going to think that I’m a horrible guy.’’
Jordan was king of the US in the ‘90s. I was in Chicago in March of 1995 when rumours exploded across the city that Jordan was coming back to the Bulls and the NBA after his premature retirement and crack at baseball.
It was amazing to be there for those few days – it’s all anyone talked about, it’s all you saw on TV and in the papers.
Of course, the rumours were true. A few days later he played and on that night it seemed the whole nation stopped and watched.
Reviews of The Last Dance published in the US say it is a raw look at Jordan –who was driven by winning and rode all those around him hard. There’s a feeling it will shock a lot of fans. We see him confront Rodman for going missing in action on a bender in Las Vegas mid-season, we hear him address his own gambling habit.
ESPN has been putting together the documentary for almost three years; Jordan gave it the green light mid-2017, believing it was time to air it warts and all.
It was originally slated to be shown during the NBA finals in June, but a campaign by prominent athletes, including Jordan’s heir apparent, LeBron James, forced ESPN’s hand.
There’s no sport to watch, so let’s see it. The first two episodes will air this afternoon on ESPN in the US – there will two new episodes each week for five weeks. Once it has aired on ESPN, it will also be available on Netflix a day later.