Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Hyde: Jordan doc is tough on Heat
Jordan was tough on Heat, but his 10-part history is even tougher
Ten parts! Ten! Whose story needs 10 parts?
The Godfather got three parts. Ken Burns gave the Civil War five episodes. But ESPN has overbaked Michael Jordan into a 10-part documentary of his greatness called, “The Last Dance (That Goes On And On).”
I’m sorry, I wouldn’t watch that much of Jordan if stuck at home in a pandemic.
But with two episodes left, here’s the worst local part of so much hot Airness: The Miami Heat merit barely a blip in Jordan’s story. He wasn’t kind to the Heat, and now history isn’t either.
The Heat played a comically cruel part in Jordan’s greatness too.
Like: Jordan playing 36 holes of golf at Fisher Island by day and beating the Heat in a playoff game by night.
Like: His jersey being raised in the Heat arena by Pat Riley three years before it was raised in Chicago.
Like: Jordan trash-talking Heat guard Steve Smith one bored night, saying after his first basket: “Thirty-eight.” Smith didn’t know what that meant.
“Thirty-six,” Jordan said after his next basket. It hit Smith a basket later: Jordan was counting down an expected 40-point game. You can’t fit that story in 10 episodes?
But nothing described Jordan and the Heat better than the Willie Burton Game.
This was the third game of a best-of-five playoff series in 1992. It was the first (and only) game in Miami. Jordan struggled in the first half. He looked sluggish.
Burton, a mercurial rookie, blocked one of Jordan’s shots. He couldn’t contain himself as the teams walked to the locker rooms at half with the Heat leading, 56-51.
“I’m shutting him down!” Burton yelled. “I got him on lockdown!”
When the teams came out before the second half, Jordan approached Heat coach Kevin Loughery, who was his first coach in Chicago. Jordan said he had a cold and wasn’t feeling well. But Burton was all the medicine he needed.
“I’m about to turn it up on you,’’ Jordan told Loughery. He finished with 56 points on 20-of-30 shooting.
“Something got me going,” he said afterward as the Bulls swept the Heat out of the playoffs.
“I hope we learned a lesson,” Loughery said.
The lesson nearly three decades later is to ask for Jordan’s shoes after a game like that. Heat assistant Alvin Gentry did (come on, an assistant coach asking an opposing player for shoes — that doesn’t make 10 episodes)? Gentry got them too and says they’re worth good money now.
The larger lesson is how unimportant the Heat were to Jordan’s story.
Even the Heat’s biggest moment against Jordan is lost. In Riley’s first season with the Heat in 1996, he had eight available players in the hours after the trade deadline when they made three deals. Jordan’s team that broke the NBA record with 72 regular-season wins was in town too.
“Why are we even here? No one thinks we can win,” Riley said in the locker room before the game in starting his motivational talk.
Jordan’s 31 points weren’t enough. Heat guard Rex Chapman had 39 points on 10-of-11 shooting from the 3-point line. The
Heat’s win is monumental to history too — one extra Chicago win would have come in handy when Golden State notched 73 wins in 2015-16.
Riley, as the years went, seemed haunted by being blocked by Jordan in the 1990s with the New York Knicks and then the Heat. He’d slip notes under Jordan’s hotel room door saying they weren’t done competing, Jordan said in his Hall of Fame speech.
When they did compete, Jordan made a habit of turning on the court to Riley as his Bulls won another playoff series. He’d deliver a golf swing to say Riley’s basketball season was over.
“I had my plan,” Riley said the day Jordan retired. “I had a retractable golf club in training camp for four years. The day that we won, I was going to whip it out, and I was going to …”
He gave a golf swing.
Coming in Episode 11.