Before The Last Dance aired on ESPN, director Jason Hehir promoted the movie in an interview with THE ATHLETIC by recalling a conversation with Michael Jordan about the un-vaulted footage: ”When you see the footage, you're going to think that I'm a horrible guy.”
Now that the documentary is complete and out in the open, it’s clear that this was an overstatement. The Last Dance presents Jordan as a hard-ass with cut throat tendencies toward his own teammates, but that’s hardly new information. We’ve seen this type of hard ass over and over again and it hardly phases the American public. The only person it seems to bother is, strangely, Jordan himself. Despite the litany of devastating events the documentary covers, he is at his most emotional at the end of Episode 7 when he looks back on his treatment of his teammates:
”Once you joined the team, you lived at a certain standard that I played the game. And I wasn’t going to take anything less. Now if that means I had to go in there and get in your ass a little bit, then I did that. … When people see this, they’re going to say, he wasn’t really a nice guy, he may have been a tyrant. Well that’s you. Because you never won anything.”
Then, visibly teary-eyed, Jordan calls for a break in filming. All of this set to triumphant rock guitars and violins.
And, look, Jordan wasn’t wrong; it would be impossible to argue against his methods considering all the championships he has to show for it. But the mythologies of Michael Jordan (and Kobe Bryant’s trademark Mamba Mentality) are enforcing the false narrative that being a cut throat hard-ass is the only way to win — in sports, in business, in life.
For every Jordan and Kobe, there’s also a Jimmy Butler or Rajon Rondo: extremely disciplined and demanding leaders whose accomplishments amount to merely pretty good. Meanwhile, we have just as many examples of leadership working another way. No one would consider Tim Duncan’s style to be tyrannical, and he has five championships to show for it, even against peak Kobe. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has championships 17 years apart, and he probably never punched James Worthy during practice. LeBron James is the 2nd best player and clearly competitive, but he also values having friendships and camaraderie even amongst his rivals.
Jordan himself sort of gets to that, saying that he’s only following his wiring. He’s just a different kind of cat. Ultimately, he vaguely asserts that it’s not really a manifesto. “That was my mentality. If you don’t want to play that way, don’t play that way.” That should ultimately be the right lesson: whatever your nature is, stick with it. But when the NBA season returns, or when sports in general comes back, I wonder who takes the hype to heart and tries their hand at alienating their teammates. I wonder if there’s a new generation, discovering Jordan fully for the first time, that will prioritize winning over just brotherhood and rapport.
I still think back to those closing minutes of a stirred-up Jordan trying to explain himself. Why does it weigh so heavily on him? Even the footage of him picking on Scott Burrel isn’t that bad; they’re laughing and smiling the whole time Jordan is picking apart his game. Steve Kerr has told and validated the punching story dozens of times. It seems as though Jordan wants a legacy and lasting image of him as one of the generic greats, only known for their excellence and accomplishments. I hope some day he understands that the rough edges are what made him more interesting. It’s the thing that people emulate, even when talent and greatness are not afforded to them.