Michael Jordan: You Can't Touch This

There have yet to be any live team sports since March, but it's undeniable that the NBA has managed to “win” the hiatus caused by Covid-19. While other sports generated stories about players refusing to play unless there is a vaccine or playoff formats that need a math major to decipher or no spitting, the NBA used just two words to keep the public’s affection.

Michael Jordan. 

Yes, the 10-part documentary series The Last Dance (the final two episodes debut in Canada Monday night on Netflix after broadcast Sunday by ESPN) has filled a void in the lives of the sports chattering class. A candid examination of Jordan’s final season— and final NBA title— with the Bulls, it retells, through his own words and those of his contemporaries, the legend of the man who made Nike. And who paid the price for being the Michael in Be Like Mike.

Only a player with Jordan’s resumé could pull off The Last Dance. For those under the age of 20 who never saw MJ live there emerges from the cigar smoke the real man behind the myth. Good thing, too, at a time when the current glittering stars of the league have been tarnished by their own running-shoe controversy. 

Remember that just before the suspension of the NBA season in March, the league had suffered a PR catastrophe, with superstars such as LeBron James and Steph Curry bending a knee to a Chinese government upset over political comments about Hong Kong made by Houston GM Darryl Morey. When Xijingping threatened to cancel events and partnerships, players known for proclaiming their own political causes cratered.

The sycophantic performance of men whose incomes depend on multi-million dollar running-shoe contracts supporting their Chinese benefactors over political freedom in Hong Kong was a colossal mis-step that threatened to seriously damage the NBA’s reputation as the hip, progressive sport.

Enter the black man who’d famously resisted the entreaties of political figures such as president Barack Obama with his declaration that “Republicans buy running shoes, too”. Using intimate documentary film on the 1998 season that has not been seen before now— spliced with current interviews of teammates, opponents, media and camp followers—Jordan changed the NBA controversy from Chinese culpability to whether the Bulls star had kept his bitter rival Isiah Thomas off the 1992 U.S. Olympic basketball team. 

Yes, his political silence gets the once-over from the film’s producers who haul out Obama and other political figures to gently chide Jordan for his reluctance to do #blacklivesmatter before Colin Kaepernick popularized the cause a generation later. Jordan, with cigar and what looks like a glass of scotch at hand, explains that his single-minded devotion to winning left no other distractions. But that’s the last we hear of the political Jordan.

For the rest of the film we see a portrait of an obsessive basketball genius who will neither tolerate losing nor anything less than his own fanaticism from teammates. They admit to being scared of the guy, put off by his nasty tongue. But all speak like passengers who watched Jordan in the pilot’s seat perform landings against all odds. They revere his presence in their lives.

After all these years since his final retirement in 2003 the chatty Jordan hasn’t mellowed much. He isn’t afraid to torch anyone. He outs teammates from his early Bulls years who were partying with drugs, booze, weed and women on the road. He talks of Thomas as if the Pistons star were a spouse who’d cheated on him. And he scorns opponents who’d had the temerity to record a good game against him. As J,.A. Adande tweeted. “One thing I’ve learned watching #TheLastDance  is that when Michael Jordan says ‘Okay’ it’s not okay with him.”

What’s most telling, however, is the portrait of a man trapped by his fame, besieged by his legend. Jordan retires the first time in 1993 to play baseball when the crush of celebrity and his father’s murder become too much. Everywhere he goes Jordan is a prisoner in his hotel room while fans and media gather outside his door. His only salvation is on the court where he takes out his anger and frustration on hapless opponents. 

Clearly it’s a life neither he nor anyone else would prefer. The star-making machinery he feeds exacts a fearsome price for becoming the man whose greatness lifted Nike from a track-shoe manufacturer to the Tesla of equipment manufacturers. His gambling behaviour— he often plays golf for tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars— is dragged through the media in stories explaining his retirement and even the murder of his father/ best friend James.

But just as he seems a brooding man-child he is rescued by his unflinching honesty about himself. With his wry smile the mature Jordan still burns over slights from 40 years ago, but it is leavened by a self-knowledge. He can admit now that his harsh treatment of many left a wound. He refuses to apologize for wanting greatness, but now he’s slower to condemn.

In today’s polarized world Jordan is an anachronism. He’d probably not get away with putting performance above politics or going to the White House to see the president. That pressure broke LeBron to its imperatives. 

But in a time when so many need a distraction from the pandemic, a window into a time where winning at basketball seemed so important is a reprieve.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author of Cap In Hand which is available on BruceDowbigginBooks.ca