Front Burner - The Last Dance and the making of Michael Jordan

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

During the '90s, at the height of the Chicago Bulls' success, Michael Jordan was arguably the most famous athlete in the world. But in retirement, the basketball phenomenon has largely stayed out of the limelight. That's why there is such excitement over a new television series chronicling Jordan's rise as an athlete, and his last NBA championship run. Today on Front Burner, Washington Post NBA reporter Ben Golliver on Michael Jordan's legacy, and why we're still talking about him today.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi everybody, Jamie here. So for weeks and weeks now we've been covering the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope you've been finding it useful, but the news in general, it's been a lot, right? So today we're going to take a little break and talk about something different. The GOAT, Michael Jordan. Every time I step on that basketball court, my focus is to win the game.

It drives me insane when I can't. The Chicago Bulls, and it's their second three-peat. Michael Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships. He is, without a doubt, one of the most iconic athletes of all time. Michael Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships. He is, without a doubt, one of the most iconic athletes of all time. In the 90s, when the Bulls were at the height of their fame, you couldn't escape them. There was the Be Like Mike campaign. Long lines of sneakerheads waiting for the next Jordans to drop.

And of course, Space Jam. Pardon me, Mr. Jordan. Can I have your autograph? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Come on and slam. And welcome to the jam. But in the years after retirement and as the league and its stars evolved,

Jordan has largely stayed out of the limelight. And that's why there's been so much excitement over this new ESPN series called The Last Dance. It features never-before-seen footage that gives audiences an intimate look at the superstar athlete, today Washington Post National NBA writer Ben Gulliver, on what The Last Dance reveals about Michael Jordan and why he's still so relevant in 2020. This is From Berger. Hi, Ben. Thank you so much for joining me today. Oh, it's my pleasure. Any chance to talk about Michael Jordan,

I'm signed up. My hand's in the air, so let's do it. Well, I'm very jazzed about this, so thank you so much for being here. And first off, I have to ask you, as a guy who covers the NBA, how badly are you missing live basketball right now? Oh, really bad. I would say the first two weeks were just complete denial. I didn't even let myself realize that there wasn't going to be games. But right now, we're supposed to be in the middle of the playoffs. And I just keep looking back at the schedule, the calendar that was supposed to be.

And obviously, you take a step back and you feel for the massive loss of life, you know, related to the coronavirus. But certainly, I never envisioned a situation where the NBA wouldn't be able to potentially crown a champion. So, you know, I know, we're all sort of cooped up in our houses. And there was already so much hype around this documentary. But it does also feel like really excellent entertainment in this new world that we're living in right now, too, hey? Absolutely. I mean, this is sort of a white whale project. I mean, he's been very, very low key throughout his entire retirement. For more than a decade, he's been not invisible, but certainly in the shadows. He's the owner of the Charlotte Hornets right now, but he doesn't do a lot of interviews

and is actually his eulogy for Kobe Bryant earlier this year. When Kobe Bryant died, a piece of me died. Was the highest profile thing he's done since his Hall of Fame speech, which was more than a decade ago. Never say never, because limits like fears are often just an illusion. Thank you very much. You know for a guy who was called by Oprah Winfrey the most famous person in the world at one point in the 1990s, he's just been a little bit quieter than usual and that's

what this project is. I mean it's really you know the greatest basketball player who ever lived getting the last word on his old rivalries, on the criticisms that people launched against him at various points of his career. It's about him telling the stories of his favorite moments and his favorite teammates and the special bond that the 1997-1998 Bulls had. That was their sixth and final championship run, was lots of fun behind-the-scenes footage to kind of complement it. Get some sleep, man. I did get a whole lot of sleep. You got to hang over this morning.

No, I am. My mom and dad are going to watch this now. Tell me more about this archival footage. I understand that it had never before been seen. And why did it take over 20 years for it to be released? Heading into that 97-98 season, the Bulls had won five of the previous seven titles. So they're basically the best dynasty of the modern NBA history. You have to go all the way back to the 60s to have a team that achieved as much as they did. And there was a lot of internal tension.

Players were going to be traded or they were going to leave in free agency. The coach was on his last season of his contract. Michael Jordan was considering retirement at that point. The whole thing was about to blow up and kind of everyone knew it. It was an open secret. So what the NBA decided to do was pitch the Bulls on having a behind the scenes camera crew from NBA Entertainment, their own television arm, that would follow these guys around the entire season. Hey, Phil, you can't work for the media and be on this plane. Right here, see? The highest paid media guy in the world.

And so all that footage basically sat untouched for the last 20 years. And the deal the NBA made with Michael Jordan was, look, if you ever want to use it, it's yours. But we're not going to use it without your approval. And for a long time, Jordan just never really felt the need to approve. He didn't want it to come out in a short form because he's a very demanding teammate. He curses at his teammates. He actually at one point calls his general manager, who's theoretically his boss's boss. He refers to him as, you know, kind of being short and fat.

He's making jokes at this guy's expense in front of all of his teammates. And, you know, if you didn't have the proper context for those moments, you know, you could be painted a certain way. And I think Jordan was very sensitive to those kinds of criticisms. And so Jordan decided he was more comfortable with that footage coming out as long as it was placed within sort of a 10-hour project like The Last Dance. The timing, frankly, couldn't have worked out better for them because there's nothing else going on from the sports landscape. So, you know, they're drawing more than six million viewers

every episode to this documentary because it's footage people have wanted to see. And there's also, you know, they've got a complete monopoly on the sport right now. What are some of your favorite moments from this footage or maybe your favorite moment from this footage? Well, I would say my favorite stretches have been the things that I've actually learned about that I didn't know previously. Now, I've read every Jordan book there is. Actually, a couple of years ago when the NBA All-Star Game was in Charlotte, I went on a road trip and I visited his high school and I visited the local museum in Wilmington, North Carolina. So I consider myself a pretty diehard fan. Museum in Wilmington, North Carolina. So I consider myself a pretty diehard fan. But because of my age, I wasn't really completely aware of what the Bulls were like in the early to mid 80s. And so, you know, Jordan speaks very frankly about some of the drug abuse that was rampant in the NBA

at that time period. One of the articles I read, they called the Bulls traveling cocaine circus. most traveling cocaine in the circus. I had one event. I was in a hotel. I walk in and practically the whole team was in there. You got all, you got your lines over here. You got your weed smokers over here. You got your women over here.

And certainly, you know, widespread cocaine use is not taking place in the NBA today. I mean, they drug test these players very carefully. But it was just a, you know, a different time period back then. And then he also talks about his acclimation to the NBA. I mean, he had three coaches in his first four years. You know, usually everyone focuses on Phil Jackson, the legendary coach who helped them win all these titles. But early in his career, Jordan's adapting to these teammates who maybe don't care about winning as much as he does. And maybe they're, you know, getting into off-court antics that he doesn't want to participate in. And it's a nice time capsule into a different era of the NBA that I just didn't know as much about.

And watching him develop and grow into that singular force that he became in the 1990s that I really remember personally as a child. You know, the be like Mike Gatorade jingles, the dream team where they capture the world's attention at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. This group may well be the greatest team ever assembled in the history of team sports. I remember those things vividly, but I don't remember the five or six years that preceded it. So that's what I've loved. but I don't remember the five or six years that preceded it. So that's what I've loved. I also found it really fascinating to watch the rivalries play out because they were kind of wild, right?

Like the one with the Detroit Pistons and to see these guys, including Jordan, like still mad at Isaiah Thomas for not shaking their hands when the Pistons lost the Eastern Conference Finals. Two years in a row, we shook their hands when they beat us. There was a certain respect to the game that we paid to them. That's sportsmanship, no matter how much it hurts. That was, I don't know, I found it so interesting.

I watched it twice. I completely agree. I think the scene where Michael Jordan is kind of brushing off Isaiah Thomas, essentially calling him a liar and saying that he made up his story about the handshakes and that he just looks so deeply pained by the memory of that experience, even, you know, 30 years later. Whatever he says now, you know, when his true actions, then, you know, he's time enough to think about it. And it seems trivial, right? Oh, he didn't shake my hands. You know, it's a matter of sportsmanship and most people would move on. But it's clear Jordan will never move on. And that's what I mean about this,

this document's big takeaway to get that level of honesty from anyone, you know, who is a superstar level player, let alone Michael Jordan in today's NBA is very, very difficult. You know, I kind of challenge people when they're watching that. Do you hate anything or anyone as much as Michael Jordan hates Isaiah Thomas? You know, it's a pretty high, it's a pretty high bar. Yeah, it's so good. They're trying to show him a video of Isaiah and he's like, yeah, you can show me anything you want. There's no way you can convince me he wasn't an asshole. One of the things that really struck me watching the series so far is how relentless Jordan was as a player, right? Like, he was in it to win. I put it in just to get myself physically strong enough to go against Detroit.

I was a slender, skitty kid. Now, I put on a couple pounds, I can throw my weight around a little bit more now. And what do we know about where that drive comes from? Well, we just know that he was a naturally competitive kid straight away. And he played lots of sports when he was young. His primary love was baseball. And people remember he actually retired at the peak of his basketball career to go play minor league baseball and jordan is safe he just outran the baseball right there just outran the baseball which again is a completely unheard of idea you know he had a brother larry who he was

incredibly competitive with and he in actually a very revealing scene michael jordan essentially says when you come to blows with someone you absolutely love, that's igniting every fire within you. And I always felt like I was fighting Larry for my father's attention. In one amazing interview with Michael's father, James, who's passed away, he says that he actually kind of brushed Michael Jordan off when he was a kid

because he wasn't handy with tools around the house. And James was kind of an amateur mechanic, and Larry, his son, Jordan's brother, was a little bit handier with the tools. And Michael would be out. You say, give me a Phillips screwdriver. He might give you a pair of pliers, you know. And I guess I was a little short paced with him. I said, get back in the house with your mom. Boy, you know, you're never going to be anything. Just go back with your mom. You know, something like that, that little type of slight would just eat at Michael Jordan. And we saw it throughout his entire life. You know, something like that, that little type of slight would just eat at Michael Jordan. And we saw it throughout his entire life.

You know, he was famously cut from his high school team as a sophomore. And that experience pained him so deeply that he brought it up at his Hall of Fame speech decades later as sort of like one of the formative moments of his life where he decided to kind of rededicate himself to the sport so he would never be cut again. I wanted to prove not just to Leroy Smith, not just to myself, but to the coach who actually picked Leroy over me. I wanted to make sure you understood you made a mistake, dude. We know that Michael and his father were essentially best friends. His father would go to games with him constantly throughout his career. He'd always be in the locker room. There's a famous moment in 1991. He wins his first title and he's clutching

the trophy and crying. And his father is, you know, embracing him as he's doing that. So he was an ever present person in Michael's life. And it's just, you know, very poignant to hear Michael say like, this is who I was doing it for. This is who made me who I am. Right, that moment where he's clutching the trophy and crying, I had not seen that before. And it's really something to see because Michael Jordan is, you know, not that emotional. Well, yeah, real quick on that. I mean, Will Purdue has one of the best lines of the entire thing,

and he's talking about that exact same embrace that you're talking about. And he says, look, before that moment. Sometimes we question whether he was human, whether he had feelings. The only emotions we ever saw from him was anger at practice. And now he's breaking down crying with the trophy. And we had never seen that side of him before. And that perfectly summarizes the Jordan experience, right? It's the desire to win basically at all costs, understanding that there's going to be a price. And then when you finally get there, it means so much to you that you can't control your emotions. And even the people who have spent years with you by your side, going through the pain, realize that even then you probably care more than everybody else in the room.

I think that's sort of Michael Jordan to a tee. As talented as Jordan was and how much this documentary focuses on that, he does recognize in these interviews that some of his teammates were crucial to that success, right? And so what would Michael Jordan be without Scottie Pippen? Bird matched with Pippen. Bird is stopped. Bird recovers. Stopped again. Well it's a great question I mean I imagine that he still would have won titles but I think the big part of Jordan's

myth is that they've won six championships uh. He never lost in the finals, and so he has a perfect 6-0 record. And so when you compare him to somebody like LeBron, who's probably the biggest star in today's NBA, he has a much worse record in the finals. And so I think Michael Jordan says in the documentary, I never won a title without Scottie. Scottie and I bonded,

because he felt like, okay, he has someone that he can count on. And I'm looking at, okay, I got someone who I can actually count on. And he just acknowledges that upfront that they were that level of a tandem. I think they're considered like the ultimate Batman and Robin throughout NBA history. Offensively, Jordan was the premier scorer and Scotty Pippen didn't get jealous. he was able to fit in and he was a great passer and they worked very well defensively um you know it was like trying to get by two panthers and so i think from that standpoint jordan's appreciation for scotty pippen comes through very very uh clearly but i also think what comes through is jordan's role in making his teammates

better in this documentary and i think if you try to to imagine Scottie Pippen without Michael Jordan, without being pushed as hard as he was pushed earlier in his career, I think we would remember him as a very different player. And I think ultimately, like the tough love approach that Michael brought to a lot of his teammates really wound up raising their games. And that's not unique to Jordan. I think that's a very common thing among basketball stars. And I think guys like Scottie Pippen, and even Dennis Rodman, who maybe needed a little bit of direction or a

little bit of structure, you know, from the organization, I think that Jordan winds up making those guys better, he winds up elevating their games. Now, I have to say if my favorite moment so far is the Isaiah Thomas feud 30 years on, is the Isaiah Thomas feud 30 years on. My second favorite moment is when Jordan goes to Vegas to pull Dennis Rodman out of multiple days of partying with like Carmen Electra. And he shows up at his hotel door and like brings him back to practice.

There's a knock on the door. It's Michael Jordan. And I hid. I didn't want him to see me like that, so I'm just hiding behind the couch with covers over me. Well, what I love about that scene, again, is it makes you consider what would happen if this took place during the modern era. And so if we had a player of Dennis Rodman's stature, somebody who's famous enough to date Carmen Electra and Madonna during his prime, if he's showing up in Vegas, aren't we

having thousands of smartphones on Twitter and TikTok and Instagram who are capturing every moment of Dennis Rodman's party? And, you know, the Bulls had a real luxury back then. I mean, no one realized that Rodman was partying in Vegas nationally. You know, it was just a very different time and place. And I do think it's an important aspect to underscore about the Bulls. These guys were so famous. And when they show that trip to Paris and Michael is just being mobbed by everyone, everywhere he goes. That's OK. I get back. He's bigger than the Pope, screams the morning paper.

And everybody wants a piece of him. To imagine those guys and that level of celebrity in the modern saturation media environment, I'm not sure it would have gone so well for them. It's a really good point. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. I know there has been criticism here of the series, but also Jordan himself, that this is just a very well managed publicity campaign.

As you mentioned, he has a lot of control over this footage and he has control over the documentary. Do you think that there's truth to that criticism? And does it take away from the documentary series for you that the criticism that this is more about, you know, branding? documentary series for you that the criticism that this is more about, you know, branding? Well, I would say that I don't think it's just a branding project. Because look, I've seen a lot of Michael Jordan Nike commercials, those are branding projects. And in those commercials, he's not tearing Isaiah apart. And he's not allowing footage of him just absolutely ruthlessly mocking his teammates in front of the cameras to be shown. So I think that there's a level of balance on this project that's not available in his true commercial endeavors, if that would make sense. But I do

think there's a real onus on the viewer to understand what you're getting. And this goes not only for this project, but it goes for all sorts of sports media and all media in general right now. Who's behind it, right? Who's actually calling the shots? And in this case, although it's airing on ESPN and Netflix globally, this project was actually conceived of by Michael Jordan's camp. You know, it was Jordan and his close advisors who were the ones that had access to the behind the scenes footage that we talked about. They're the ones who actually hired the director. They're the ones that approved the episode layout. And ultimately, Jordan was the one who sat for these interviews that he wouldn't normally sit for, you know for various other publications and and so of course the control

factor matters and understanding that as a viewer that this is you know for lack of a better phrase athlete generated content um and it should be compared to you know some of the shows that lebron james puts on hbo watching my boys play ball and then it went from me sitting on the bench to me getting an argument. I got an argument. Or maybe something like the Players Tribune as opposed to being a truly independent project.

Before we go today, I want to talk to you a little bit more about Michael Jordan's legacy. You know, one of his most obvious legacies is how he paved the way and became this role model for players like LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. Michael was very tactical and very efficient with his movements. There was no wasted space. There weren't any wasted dribbles.

I mean, he was very surgical with how he approached the game. You can see it. He made the game look so easy. In what other ways has Jordan left a legacy on basketball and sports more widely that we don't often talk about, though? Well, I think, first of all, from a financial standpoint, the NBA's current situation is tied directly to Jordan's fame, right? The league exploded in the 1990s. So for the NBA to regularly go out and have international fan bases, to have NBA China as its own entity, to have deep roots in Europe and other parts of Asia. That's one of Michael Jordan's biggest

legacies. I mean, his level of fame capturing the global imagination is probably number one. His sneakers are another gigantic one. I mean, the Air Jordan sneakers still sell better than everybody else's sneakers. There's not another basketball player right now who outsells Jordan when it comes to sneakers. And that's, you know, crazy. 25 years after the fact, because a lot of the sneaker consumers at this point weren't even alive to watch Michael Jordan play. He's always had this unique ability of just kind of capturing a wide audience that extends far beyond basketball. And I think one underrated aspect of it, frankly, is the fact that he's just a handsome guy. And he was a handsome guy when he was first coming up.

I mean, I think that really mattered in terms of his marketability. But you look at the major companies that he worked with as sponsorships, whether it's McDonald's, Gatorade, Nike, of course. I mean, a lot of those companies are still major, major players within the modern sports landscape. And if you're a player coming up, for example, those are the blue chip sponsor deals that you want to sign in part because Michael Jordan put them in that area. So I would say his touch on the game remains very, very strong.

And that's one of the reasons why he's remained private. I think for a lot of the last 20 years, he's one of the reasons why he's remained private. I think for a lot of the last 20 years, he's kind of felt like his work and his reputation and his legacy speak for themselves, that he doesn't actually have to do the speaking. And I think, you know, largely that's true. And that's why I'm so glad that he decided to do this project, because it is nice to hear his voice too. Yeah. And I think for a whole new generation of basketball fans, this is probably a far more fulsome introduction to Jordan. There's no question.

I have professional writer colleagues who are in their mid twenties, guys who really, really know their stuff from a basketball standpoint. They just weren't alive when Michael Jordan was playing and you can go back and watch a game here or there on YouTube, but it's not the same thing as really diving in deep with this 10-hour documentary. All right, Ben Gulliver, thank you so much. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Okay, so before we go today, there is some COVID-19 related news worth noting.

The federal government released new modeling numbers today, and there is some positive news. There has been a slowing of cases across the whole country. Previously, the number of new cases was doubling every three days, and now it doubles every 16 days. Short-term projections show there could be between 53,000 and nearly 60,000 total cases by May 5th, and between 3,277 and 3,883 deaths by that date. I know it's very strange to be saying those numbers were good news, but this does show that all the measures being taken are having some effect. Now here is a truly stunning number revealed today though. Right now the vast majority, about 79% of deaths, have been connected to long-term care homes. As provinces across the country release plans to ease restrictions, Trudeau did caution that moving too quickly could undo any work done to flatten the curve.

That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thank you so much for listening to FrontBurner, and we'll talk to you again very soon.