The tragedy of
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