The last two All-Star Games should’ve been the perfect time to celebrate Michael Jordan, the greatest player the NBA’s ever known.
He hosted last year’s annual showcase in Charlotte, and this year’s took place in Chicago, where his six championship banners and his iconic Jump Man statue lord over the United Center.
But for both, and almost certainly by design, Jordan was invisible.
The most fiercely competitive and ruthless athlete in NBA history was loath to drop his guard in public. I mean naturally. This is MJ we’re talking about.
Thatap why I can’t wait to watch ESPN’s “The Last Dance,” which chronicles his last title run and debuts Sunday night.
Jordan apparently had some degree of control over the project, which had been sequestered in the NBA’s archives for over two decades. I doubt that means he can scrub the unflattering portions of Chicago’s 1997-98 championship run – the last title in their second three-peat.
I can’t wait to see unvarnished Jordan’s relationship with Scottie Pippen, reportedly fraught after Pippen delayed a surgery that kept him out half the season. The same goes for longtime GM Jerry Krause, whose meddling was a constant source of friction but whose legacy was that of a championship architect.
I’m eager to see how Jordan wore the weight of expectations after it became public that Phil Jackson would be gone after the year. Jordan famously responded he wouldn’t play for anyone other than Jackson. Was it liberating to know that it would ultimately be over after the season, regardless of outcome? Was it daunting to know another three-peat was at stake?
This was a theme Golden State’s dynasty talked about excessively: The fatigue of being around each other and winning to the degree that they did. Steve Kerr, Jordan’s teammate for the entire second three-peat, knows as well as anyone the toll winning takes.
But what I’m most excited about is seeing the spotlight reignited on Jordan. Ever since LeBron James came into the league in 2003, he’s been anointed the heir. His championship failures and successes have been documented more heavily than anyone else in the modern era, and itap spawned a loud chorus that he’s perhaps better than Jordan.
I hope the documentary helps correct the record, or at least mandates more critical comparisons.
As the groundswell of coverage surrounding the documentary picked up over the last week, one question kept being revisited. Why had it taken so long for Jordan to allow the footage to be used and what ultimately changed? Was it really that he was just a private person and might be embarrassed at how he’d be portrayed?
that Jordan finally agreed to the documentary in 2016, on the same day that James and the Cavs held their championship parade.
Was it a coincidence or was Jordan at all threatened by James’ growing fairytale, not to mention the 73-win Warriors that had broken the Bulls’ regular-season record that season?
I hope James’ most recent championship compelled Jordan to greenlight the project. More than 20 years later, it would be the perfect ending to a career marked by an obsession to be the best.
