The tragedy of being Michael Jordan
The Last Dance, the Netflix documentary about Michael Jordan, has been a searing examination of the terrible Faustian bargain that tears down the souls of the great professional sportsmen.
Jordan can do things like no other basketball player before or since. Reggie Miller calls him ‘Black Jesus’. But in return for the granting of these magical powers, Jordan wanders a lonely hotel room with only a cigar to light his way through his abyss of despair.
Jordan says at the start of episode VI; ‘‘It’s funny, but a lot of people told me they would like to be Michael Jordan for a day, a week, but let them try to be Michael Jordan for a year and see if they like it. I don’t think they quite understand it’s no fun.’’
We certainly understand by the end of The Last Dance. During the 10-part series Jordan is called ‘‘bigger than the Pope’’ and ‘‘like a King.’’ Arch enemy Isaiah Thomas, who Jordan blocks from going to the Olympics, says he has ‘‘an extra levitation’’. Jordan’s retirement press conference is likened to the last supper.
Larry Bird, whose feats as a player Jordan is driven to surpass, says: ‘‘That wasn’t Michael Jordan out there, that was God disguised as Michael Jordan.’’
Even Jordan himself participates in the iconography. He tries to brush it off as a joke, but there is a ghastly moment when a humbler team-mate comes seeking tickets for the big game. Jordan asks: ‘‘Matter where they are, man?’’
‘‘They could be in the locker room or next to God,’’ says the player.
Jordan hands him a ticket and says, ‘‘You just got one from Him.’’
There is a terrible chill to the joke that hangs in the air after the words come out of Jordan’s mouth. And you realise that every dunking leap skywards is just one more step on the descent into a lonely, egotistical hell. We cease to admire the genius of Jordan’s athletic abilities and begin to pity him.
It was so different when he started on his journey. Jordan was radiant. He was a happy young man on his racing bike pedalling around campus. The world was his playground. And then along comes Jerry Krause, the Bulls general manager, introduced by a shaky handheld camera as he furtively leaves the car park.
This documentary is brilliantly cut and compiled by director Jason Hohir and his team. Hohir portrays Krause both as Mephistopheles and also as the little man being bullied by these giant sportsmen. They’ll have to lower the rim if Jerry wants to play with us, mocks Jordan.
But Jerry is playing with Michael. Krause and owner Jerry Reinsdorf have bought Jordan’s soul. And only after the third Championship and the death of his father, does Jordan see what he is becoming. He tries to escape. He goes to baseball to be a kid again.
It is a theme we see repeated. The fantastic Dennis Rodman, ‘‘a heyoka’’ or backward walking person in the acute, native American description of coach Phil Jackson, speaks of doing things that make ‘‘me feel like a 10-yearold kid again’’.
Scottie Pippen’s brother talks of a golden childhood where’’ ‘everybody shared everything. It was just a good time. We didn’t even know we were poor.’’
It is the same for Jordan. He goes to baseball to find his youth again. And maybe to find another father. It is a diabolical coincidence that three of these young Bulls
basketball players have dads who are struck down. Pippen’s is paralysed when he is a boy. Steve Kerr’s, a college professor, is shot in the head in Beirut. And Jordan’s dad is murdered as he sleeps by the roadside.
Jordan says that security man Gus becomes like a father to him. But the true father figure for these abandoned young men is coach Jackson. That is surely the true reason why Jordan refuses to play for Chicago if they get rid of Jackson. He can’t lose another father.
Jackson is the true hero at the centre of this tale. But even his love and compassion and stillness cannot save Jordan from the terrible bargain of fame. Michael was happier on a push bike, but there is no escape on a bike from the fan mob who say ‘‘You are missing out on life’’ if you don’t see Jordan play. So the bike is replaced by red and white sports cars with personalised MJJ1 number plates.
We would see this terrible pattern repeated in the journey and Orphean descent of Tiger Woods. His father Earl once said; ‘‘Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity … He is the Chosen One. He’ll have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations. The world is just getting a taste of his power.’’
I always felt sorry for Tiger, and I feel the same compassion for Jordan. Jud Buechler admits that even his teammates were afraid of him. Will Perdue says he was ‘‘an arsehole and a jerk’’. BJ Armstrong says that with Jordan’s mentality of win at all costs, an oft repeated mantra by the man himself, ‘‘you can’t be a nice guy.’’
Jordan breaks down when he is confronted with the realisation that he is not viewed as a nice guy. Of course, he knows that of himself already. Driven ‘‘insane’’ when he is unable to win, he uses that insanity to drive his team-mates. It makes him unlikable.
And yet there is a beautiful young man prisoned inside. We see a glimpse of him when he is tossing coins, like the Cincinnati Kid, in a game against his security guard, before he is again consumed by the competitive urge. We truly see it when Jordan gets into the driver’s seat on the bus. It may be the happiest he looks in the entire series. You half expect him to sing, ‘‘The wheels on the bus go round and round.’’
But when Barack Obama and Bill Clinton are queueing up to touch the hem of your garment, when Nas and Justin Timerberlake and Spike Lee are cradling the very shoes that you wear, when Gatorade is showing a kid ‘‘dream that he is me’’ and promoting ‘‘Be Like Mike’’, then how is happiness even remotely possible for the person Oprah calls ‘‘the most famous man on the planet.’’
The Last Dance is one of the great docu series about sport. Yes, it lacked an ending. It failed to nail the final shot like Jordan did during his superman career. Hey Bill Winnington, ‘‘jump on my cape, but you need to hold on’’.
It should perhaps have finished with Jordan’s words at the end of episode six: ‘‘If I had the chance to do it all over again I would never want to be considered a role model. It’s like a game that’s stacked against me. There’s no way I can win.’’
When the Bulls win their third championship Jordan is crying on the floor of the changing room, hugging a basketball. It is a toy. It seems like he is hanging onto a childhood he can’t get back. Jordan just wants to be a kid again. Instead they turned him into Michael Messiah, the black Jesus of basketball, whose picture touches the Barcelona sky.
We can only weep for him.