The Ringer NBA Show - Final Takeaways From the 'Last Dance' Finale

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

After the final two episodes of 'The Last Dance' premiered Sunday night, Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey break down the key takeaways and share their overall thoughts on the popular sports documentary. They talk about how a document like this could be made for modern players and what this doc does to Michael Jordan's legacy as a whole. Hosts: Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly, and welcome to The Ringer Podcast Network. The Ringer is launching a new podcast from the guys who brought you a Cespitous family barbecue called Baseball Barbecue. Hosted by Jake Mintz and Jordan Schusterman, they're bringing you the good, the bad, and the utterly bizarre corners of the baseball world and everything that makes it special. Throughout the off season, they'll dive into the rabbit hole on some of their favorite fascinations, from the home run derby to baseball brawls and much more. Once the season returns, they'll break down the latest MLB news and developments. You can subscribe to baseball barbecue on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Ringer NBA show. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor with Ringer.com and I'm joined by my buddy the winter. I'm your text winter to your Phil Jackson. I think that when they write our story,

that's going to be our story. It's Sean Fennessee. What's up, man? Chris, we all know that I'm pippin and your Jordan. Let's not be ridiculous here. And I've got, it's early on a Monday morning and I've got some back aches and you're going to have to carry me through this finals game. Sean, we're going to talk about the last dance, the last two episodes, and we're going to talk about the documentary itself. Because I think obviously in the last couple of weeks, tons of people, including the two of us,

have talked about what Jordan meant us. We've talked about what Jordan was like to watch in the 90s, and we've watched it unfold as it does, as does almost everything in 2020. We watched Jordan become a football that people kind of use going back and forth to argue over all sorts of, sort of hot button issues. But I kind of wanted to talk to you at the top about the idea of of Last Dance as a documentary. We've done the disclosures before where you know, you've talked about

working with Jason in the past and the ringer's got connections with Jason. I think we're both really big fans of this of this movie. But I wanted to ask you like at the end when you finished last dance, were you left satisfied as a, as a viewer? Did you find it a satisfying experience? Easily a satisfying experience, probably even more so than I expected. I loved just being with it. I think so many people around the country who care about sports and even those who don't care about sports had something to look forward to every Sunday night that gave them a nostalgia hit.

And I think that's an interesting way to approach this conversation because there's been, I don't want to say controversy, but an ongoing conversation about whether or not a nostalgia hit equates to journalism. And I don't think that this necessarily was a pure act of journalism, but I also don't think that it was puppeteering either. I don't think that somebody, you know, put their hand up, Jason Hare's back and forced him to make a certain kind of a film. I think it's a fascinating and very modern hybrid of where access documentary journalism is right now. And it was immensely fun to watch. And there were a couple of reasons. for that. One, obviously, we're dealing with archival footage from the 97-98 season that most people

have never seen before. And two, we're dealing with archival footage that we've seen over and over and over again. And I never tire of watching, which is the history of the NBA, basically, from 1984 through 1998, which is, I mean, for you and I is a glory period. And we get to do it with a through the lens of a person that we virtually never hear from in this candid and acidic and still indignant way in Michael Jordan. So personally, I loved it. You know, you and I had both seen one through eight many weeks ago and nine and ten were fresh for us.

So it'll be interesting to kind of unpack it. But what about you? I mean, did you feel like this was beyond entertaining, was sort of worthy of something beyond what Bill has called the docummercial? Yeah. You know, I felt like it basically replicated the sensation of watching sports. You know, I felt as invested, even though I knew the ending, as invested with the sort of details of plays, like how Reggie Miller exploded through Jordan's chest or how John Stockton or Steve Kerr would find open space or watching Scotty Pippen clearly laboring up the court against Utah after he had kind of done his back in. And a lot of that stuff really was a bomb for me. You know, and I, so I'll always have a really. fond place in my heart for this documentary because of that. I do think it was really fascinating too

because it took me back to a time in my life when I did not actually think about sports as entertainment. I didn't really think about whether or not I liked players. They were either better than the guys I liked or worse than the guys I liked. And I also didn't feel like I had a ton of choice about who I liked. And part of that was formed by Jordan. You know, part of that. Part of that. And part of that that relationship to sports was formed by this guy who was just like, fuck you, I'm staying in Chicago, I'm coming back, and taking what's mine, you guys think you're better than me, I will crush you. And that actually was how I thought sports worked for a very long time. That's the story that the movie tells. The film is bookended by this quote that Jordan gives

after he's drafted where he says, I want to make the Chicago Bulls like the Boston Celtics, like the Los Angeles Lakers. I want to give the city and this team that same idea. identity, which feels so foreign now. That feels like it happened in a Tolkien novel. You know, like the fact that, you know, player empowerment and the ability for players to move from team to team and the fact that the league in many ways is a player league and not a team league, just it does feel, it reminds me of watching 50s and 60s NFL films about players in black and white that almost felt as if they were operating in a different sport. Yeah. Yeah, where then they were like, yeah, I broke my nose four times in that game.

And you're just like, oh, okay, you know, like I want to talk to you a little bit about the end. And I think that this is kind of doubles as a conversation about Jordan. But I want to talk a little bit about foils and villains because Jordan's villain and foil at the end of his career with Chicago, while you can make the argument that it's Jerry Kraus and Jerry Rinesdorf and the people who are trying to break up this dynasty or don't, want to pay for this dynasty. What we get on the court is the Utah Jazz. And I remember, while I think this documentary taught me that those series were a lot more closer than I remembered. There was a feeling that I had a lot watching Jordan during those days that you felt like he was kind of touring with people. The idea of saying he's got this is something that's very hard to say now. You know, I remember thinking that about Mariano Rivera. I remember thinking about

Tiger Woods. And I remember thinking about Michael Jordan. Mariana Rivera. eventually was gettable, but, you know, for a long time, it's just like, Rivera's in, you can turn the game off. Watching Jordan against Utah, I don't remember thinking, man, Utah's really, they've got their number. This could happen. And I wonder whether or not that contributes, in terms of historiography, like, in my mind, the biggest sin that the last dance commits is making that series seem closer than it was,

but I don't know if I'm remembering that wrong. Well, I mean, they do push it to six games in that final season. And it's interesting. I think if people had grown bored of the Spurs, mechanistic, competent, highly structured style of play in the O's and in the 2010s, like, let me tell you, the jazz were a sight to be hold in terms of this like monochromatic, indestructible style of basketball. Seeing those highlights last night, obviously took me back to a time. I was watching so much basketball, probably more basketball than I watch now in that exact period. I was 16 years old when that series was happening. And the NBA was a huge part of my

of my personal life in a very weird way. And I watched a lot of Utah Jazz games, something I just wouldn't do now the same way I wouldn't know. I didn't watch a lot of Spurs games in the 2010s. And that was obviously just an extraordinary once in a lifetime team. I mean, the two top 25, top 30 guys in NBA history were on that team. You know, to me, it wasn't shocking to remember how close it was because of how skilled I thought that team was. The secondary and tertiary players on that team were really great. Like Jeff Hornacek was on that team. That was a really,

really special team. And I think like so many teams, like the Knicks from that era, like the suns from that era, like the Sonics from that era, like the Pacers from that era, as we saw last night, if any of those teams, if there were no Bulls, if any of those teams would have had a chance to rise and become the dominant team of that era, that's part of the reason why that's part of the case for MJ as

the greatest player of all time is there's just a sense that the competition was so much stronger from 1990 through 1998 in the NBA than it has been in the last 10 years. Even still, I completely understand what you're saying. By the time we got through five NBA championships, it didn't seem very dramatic. And in fact, it felt like if MJ and the Bulls didn't win, it would have been a massive letdown because of all of the conversation around the last dance and because of the way that their season was positioned. So it's a paradox in a way. If they had lost or they had gone to seven games and squeaked it out, it would have been like, it actually was kind of a disappointing season for the Bulls, which is strange to say.

But also, I don't want to underestimate just how punishing it was to watch Stockton of Malone night after night after night after night because they were, they were a machine. And it's a testament to those Bulls teams that they beat them twice and the second time in their own building, which as I recall was just the most incredible home court advantage barring the bulls in the NBA. Yeah. I mean, Reggie Miller calls going back to Chicago a death set. sentence. If you go back to Chicago 3-1, he's like, it's a death sentence. Reggie Miller,

by the way, I thought fantastic in this documentary. Excellent. Great, great narrator. He can be such a cornball sometimes on when he's doing color commentary during games. I wish we got this Reggie Miller. I know obviously, like, he gets the benefit of hindsight and it's talking about himself, but I thought he was so funny and so candid and also still kind of like, I was like pretty good. You know what I mean? Like, I could get Jordan's number. Somebody I follow on Twitter named Mike Beach last night was tweeting, I think. This was a dude who was like when you look at Reggie Miller's numbers

and it's just like 14.7 points a game, but then just hit like only the biggest shots in the world and was just an absolute, like, he was just an assassin at the end of games. You don't have to tell me. As a Knicks fan, nobody tortured me more

than Reggie Miller. Reggie Miller tortured Knicks fans more than Michael Jordan. I think with Michael Jordan, there was an air of magisterial grace, as if something was handed down from God, Reggie Miller was as if Satan came from below. I mean, he absolutely tortured people. And you're right, though, the way that he

talked about MJ and those Bulls teams is very similar to the way that a lot of the superstars who were interviewed in present day talked about him in this film, which is with adulation and admiration and a completely uncomplicated acceptance of the fact that he was the greatest. You know, if you listened to Barclay talk. If you watched Stockton last night in the episode, you sensed that there was no debate. You know, there was no arrogance or anger. It was almost like we, even though we all lost,

we were grateful to have been a part of this period of time in basketball history, which is just so unusual. And when we get whatever LeBron's The Last Dance is 20 years from now, I'll be very curious to see if his contemporaries speak about him in the same way. I can't imagine Chris Paul or James Harden or Russell Westbrook or Durant reflecting on LeBron in quite the same way. I could be wrong, but it's so unusual. And you're right, Reggie Miller identifying MJ as Black Jesus and saying I only called him Black Jesus or Jordan from that period on was fascinating. I think that, I mean, I was going to ask you about next last dances, which I'm sure is a

really hot topic today. I think Bill and Ryan talked about it last night even. What could we do next? and I want to talk to you about the possible execution of a LeBron one. To me, though, you know, selfishly, and this would have been almost, this would have been impossible and also would have gotten maybe like 10% of the ratings. This film, Last Dance, ends like Return of the Jedi. I wanted it to end like Godfather 2.

I wanted the next 15 years. I wanted Jordan wearing the 4 or 5. I want buying the Hornets, and I want being confronted with not being able to do the thing that you know you were the greatest at and watching the Zeller brothers do it and watching, you know, watching, you know, these guys do it and being forced to, and then also what it was like for a guy so critical of Kraus and Rinesdorf to now be an owner. When we never get that kind of candor about so many different things, but it ended just where I wanted it to get started in a lot of ways. Yeah, you make a good point. I will say, I felt like the greatest

revelation of the whole series was specifically what he said at the end. when Jason shares the iPad with him to share Jerry Reinsdorf's comments about why they didn't bring the team back, I certainly had never read or heard Michael Jordan's reaction to the end of that dynasty specifically and the mechanics of why it happened. It seems like some of the responsibility sits with Phil Jackson, who clearly had just decided that he was done with this organization and wanted a new chapter, but that that was largely driven by what Kraus and Reinsdorf did. But Jordan uncomplicatedly saying, I was, wanted to get seven and they didn't let me get seven. And the fact that that does lead to

this very strange period where he walks away from the game for a few years and then he comes back as a wizard and then he attempts to, you know, he buys steak in the hornets and then, you know, he is where he is today. The fact that there's this kind of five year window of competition in the league that we don't see is one of the craziest what ifs I can imagine, you know, Bill and Ryan did talk about this last night. And what if he had gone to the Knicks or what if he had gone to another team at that time. That would have been interesting. Personally, the specific example that Jordan laid out, which is the can we get seven, can we all go on one year deals and get seven as bulls? It's just an extraordinary whatever. Because as we've seen

from even this warrior's semi-dynasty over the last five years, four in a row just feels impossible. It just feels impossible. I mean, that's the thing about the last dance team is that they do weather half of a season without Scotty. And they weather or half, a whole season of Dennis at any given moment looking to decamp to Vegas or WrestleMania. I don't know how many more times Phil

can burn poems on a coffee cup. You know, like, there are a certain amount of tricks that you can use that work because the tricks are being played in a very specific chapter in a story. You can't necessarily do that forever. Like, I would be very curious to know

how many times Greg Popovich did really meaningful halftime speeches that talked about leaving everything on the court and like forever starts right now over the course of 20 years with Tim Duncan, David Robinson, Tony Parker and manager Genoble. Because those guys worked, that was the introduction of a basketball team as a corporation almost. You know what I mean? Like a beautiful corporation. But the idea that, you know, every day as you guys come to work, nobody goes to WrestleMania. Nobody ever says they don't want to go into a game when I asked them to go into a game. Nobody gets mad because they don't get the ball thrown to them on a side. sideline out of bounds play. And that's how that works. And that was honestly, pretty much the next big basketball story is the, is the rise of the spurs after Jordan. It's true. That led to it such a fascinating, I don't want to say it's a fallow period necessarily, but you essentially enter that time when teams like those Pistons teams become dominant. And we go absent a dynasty for a little while. Yeah. I mean, I guess because Kobe and Shaq are the suggestion of a dynasty, but ultimately we're too combustible to stay together. Yeah.

They don't have the same six to seven to eight year lifespan that those Bulls teams had. And it's probably reasonable to say that that can never happen again, especially because of the unusual salary cap mechanics that led to Durant joining the Warriors and something that it feels like, especially in light of recent events, just seems impossible. I just don't know if you're ever going to be able to have another team unless a team drafts extraordinarily well and experiences like key injuries to its two best players. and then you find yourself in a situation where Zion Williamson teams up with LeBron

and Anthony Davis, something of that effect. It just doesn't seem like we're ever going to see something quite like this. That's not to diminish what Kobe and Shaq accomplished. It's not to diminish Kobe's five championships. It's not to diminish anything that the Pistons did or the Spurs or the Miami Heat accomplished in the last 20 years. It's just this specific thing, this air of inevitability that came with those Bulls victories

and the fact that we didn't have that one last chance at it. we talk about sliding doors all the time, but it's one of the most incredible sliding doors possible. And I actually, to your point about what I would have liked to have seen, I think I'm just kind of curious what 1998, 99, and 2000 looked like for MJ? How did he spend his time? You know, was he just golfing and gambling and smoking cigars? Was he racked with doubt and frustration about the way that things played out? Did he want to make a comeback sooner, but didn't? was it really that he saw Vince Carter and T-Mack and Iverson and this new generation of guys? And so that's the only thing that compelled him.

Was there something else? You're right. There's now a hole in that story that we feel like even though we just spent 10 hours with the guy, that we probably now want to get filled somehow. And I don't know if that'll ever get filled in the way that we want. Yeah. There was a notable, I mean, it's Jordan's story. So this isn't a requirement, nor is it ever a requirement.

But there was a notable lack of, I thought we were going to get a reunion shot. Honestly, I thought that there was going to be. everybody in a room together, all the surviving members of that team and even the ownership group and that we would get Jerry and Jordan, Rinesdorf and Jordan maybe in the same place, or that we would get this kind of group of guys together finally. And, you know, there was a lot of passing the iPad back and forth and that's become, I would love to see that. I would love to see some classic documentaries that I've seen if the director could hand the subject an iPad being like, this is what this guy said about you. You know, and just to get those reactions

that would be pretty amazing. Maybe Errol Morris can start using that. Yeah. I mean, we don't get the impression, though, that MJ feels a brotherhood with those guys. No, it's up to Steve Kerr to say that. You know what I mean? Exactly. It's not MJ who is like, yeah, like at the end of the day, these guys were the closest thing to brothers that I had, you know, other than my own brothers. No, he really comes off more like General Patton here, you know, than Julius Caesar. He's not an of the people leader. He is, I need you to rise to level of expectation. You're right. Most traditional feel-good sports documentaries,

if this was about that undefeated dolphins team, you would have gotten that shot that you're talking about where the surviving members of that team put their fist up to the screen and show their ring together and stand gracefully a stride history. And the Bulls teams, you could tell. I mean, you watch the film.

It certainly seems like Judd Bushler and Bill Wennington, even Scotty to some extent, have this complicated and resentful and frustrated, but also odd relationship to MJ. I think we should talk about Steve Kerr a little bit just because I think he is such a fascinating figure. And he feels exactly like the kind of person who, if he did not go on to one of the most successful

coaching careers in recent memory and a bringer podcast host, his story would have been one of those like, this should be a movie unto itself kind of a story. And maybe at some point it will be. but that little 10-minute pocket history of Steve's life and the tragedy that happened to his father. And the revelation that he and Michael never talked about what happened to their fathers was amazing. Like if you and I both eat a turkey sandwich within 10 days of each other, I'm like, Chris, turkey sandwiches, right, bro? Incredible stuff.

Turns out it was meant to be. Just two guys wearing hats. I mean, who could have guessed it, you know? Yeah. Yeah, so that's, I mean, that just shows so much about how compartmentalized MJ was. And maybe even Steve Kerr was, I think it's hard to say. He obviously, Steve is such a graceful and thoughtful guy. And that's such a powerful thing that happened to him.

But I came away with even more respect for him and more fascinated by him. And even more confused about Michael's psychology, you know, that even the people that he was closest to who had proven themselves to him, you know, who had stood up to him or who had risen to the challenge. in those tense moments that he keeps referring to over and over again in the film, he still just was really distant from them. I don't know. As somebody who's very close to a lot of the people that I work with, I find him deeply unrelatable in that way. Oh, I thought that the portrait of his relationships towards the end of the documentary

was actually quite telling. I mean, the fact that essentially his best friends are these three guys who are responsible for his safety, but also responsible for maintaining his image to some extent with Ahmad Rashad and that it's like two security guards and Ahmad Rashad or his crew. And that one of those security guards is clearly a father figure and is like a stand in for his dad. And that it's like that scene where they're sitting and they're kind of doing like David Mamet dialogue in the back where it's like, some can, some can't. And it's like nobody actually talks like that with their friends. You know, really.

I mean, maybe if I had played before a NBA finals game, I would say stuff like that to you. But like despite the fact that we were getting this sort of like lost. footage of this guy in repose or in like a private moment, it didn't feel that private at all. He looked exactly like Michael Jordan before going into battle. But he's Daniel Plainview. You know, he has assembled this coterie of people who support him and protect his vision, even if they don't, I don't want to say like, but even if it's a, it's by circumstances situation. Obviously, his ability to develop trust with people was very complex.

and the people who protected him were bound by that trust. And so it's understandable that those became the people that were closest to him in life. I don't think that his relationships were cynical. I thought that the portrayal of Gus Lett and that father figure role that he took on in his life was quite touching. And I kind of wish that there was a little bit more of that in the film, honestly. It felt like one of the only, you know, the idea that Michael was the first person who realized that Gus was sick and called his wife to alert her to the fact that he needed to get treatment. showed that very rare, that kind of vanishing, empathetic side to him. The construction of the bubble around him and the unwillingness to let the people that he played with enter that bubble is, for lack of a better word, just weird.

It is, it's understandable if, you know, you, you don't, you want to be friendly with Larry Bird, but also treat him like your enemy. If you want to be friendly with Carl Malone and treat him like your enemy, for Scotty and, you know, Horace Grant and Michael obviously don't have a very good relationship. right now. And, you know, John Paxson seems to have a complex relationship to Michael as an ambassador for the Bulls for many years. All those guys just feeling a little bit distant is just, uh, I just, I can't, I can't connect to it. I don't, I don't get it. And I'm a very competitive person. I just can't understand that. Well, I think that you're a competitive person. I'm actually not, you know, I'm not a particularly competitive person. But I think that both of us probably would look at the fellowship that you get when with working with people and be like, there's no really

reason to be competitive without that. You know what I mean? Nor can you really get where you need to go without the supportive people around you. Do you think it's because he was so successful before the age of 30 that he was able to raise the bar of success in his own mind and then could not imagine not holding other people to that? Perhaps one of the more revolutionary things that he did was that he, I don't think he subscribed to typical or at least traditional ideas of what teams were about.

I think he did at Carolina. I think he did look at that as a kind of paradise. And not only does it a place where he learned so much about basketball, but clearly he loved Dean Smith and seemed to enjoy his time there. And he wanted to stay. And Dean Smith was like, you got to go. He went back to Carolina to rehab his injury. And that's something that comes up a lot.

Like when you talk to NBA players and you see them, they're like, the best time of my life was definitely college. You know what I mean? Like then even if I was only there for eight months, I still consider myself a Kentucky guy, you know? I think what Jordan did was he just smashed that idea. Like all the stuff that we're taught growing up about what teams are supposed to be. He was like, no,

the team is here to prove their worth to me because otherwise we're never going to get anywhere. And I'm not here to make them feel good. I'm not here to make them feel safe. I'm not here to allow them to be vulnerable. And obviously what we saw in this documentary, was it went beyond just like, I'm a tough love guy. He was like actively seemed like an asshole. You know what I mean?

Like on the planes, you know, if you looked up on a team plane and saw a guy with a giant cigarette and a pony bottle of Budweiser, taking a bunch of money from a bunch of guys who made like one tenth of what he made, you'd probably just be like, what the fuck is happening? I thought that shooting contest they had during the Utah series at the end of the film was very telling. All the members of the team are essentially taking, I don't know, was that like a 44. footer from the right corner right on the hash mark there. Every player steps up and most of them miss or miss badly. Steve Curry even kind of just misses pretty badly. And MJ steps up and he

launches one and of course he switches it and he wins the competition. Most competitive guy in the history of the world. And he is just downright insufferable after he makes the shot. He is just like and just shaking his head and lording it over everybody there. This is the wealthiest player on the court. He's the most successful player of his generation. He's the undisputed king of the NBA. And he hit a 40-footer in a practice time competition. And he would not let a single person not hear about it. That's like, that's a mentality thing. Like you just have to, like I said, I really like to win. But then when I do win, it's, I'm actually embarrassed by it. And he is the opposite. You know, he is never more rejoicing, never more emotionally open and exultant than when he wins something.

And I thought, you know, the seven and eight ended with that extraordinary moment where we see him on the floor kind of crying in the locker room, seemingly reflecting on his father's death and how difficult it was to get back to that moment. And then that famous moment after he wins the fifth championship when he stands up on the scoreboard and is flashing five to the audience. And then six when he's sort of raising the six fingers in the air and he's clutching the Larry O'Brien trophy. and that's the only time when it seems like we see somebody who does it, who has the restrictor played off, you know, who doesn't know, can't control themselves.

That's so fascinating. On the one hand, you don't want any person to be like that. You would never teach your kids. Here's how you act when you win. But on the other hand, it's so pure. It's so undiluted.

It's so raw in a, in a complicated way. It was a reminder of just his total unique quality as a figure. Like, LeBron just does not bring that quality to the game. In fact, the criticism of LeBron is that it feels very managed and rehearsed almost. You know, his joy, people have criticized him and said that those are kind of like a crocodile tears situation.

With Jordan, like, I buy it. I buy that he is a sociopath. I totally buy it. It's part of what makes me wonder whether or not there are other layers to the end of this movie and whether or not this is a guy who could have handled losing to a Miami Heat or New York Knicks in 1999 and walking off the court. What he says towards the end where he was like, everybody would have come back. Scotty would have taken some convincing. But when you put seven and the idea of seven in front of him, like he thinks he would have come back. I don't know. You know what

mean? And I don't know whether or not at the end if they were like, well, look, you can come back and we can do the best we can bringing these other guys back. But without Phil, obviously, they weren't going to play. And I just have a hard time imagining Michael Jordan losing in the Eastern Conference semifinals and being like, okay, that's it. Was he quit? Would he quit after that? You know, that's the thing about him. He was, go big or go home. He won three. He stepped away from the game. He won three. He stepped away from the game. He came back, didn't have any more, stepped away from the game and bought a team. You know, like there's no middle ground to this guy. That 98 season, this is something that Ryan and Bill talked about in depth. And they have more

expertise, I think, than we do about it. But that was a, you know, the 98, 99 season, the lockout season was, you know, really important, obviously, because that was the only time, I think, in NBA history that an eight seed went to the NBA finals. It was the Knicks. And the East was very weak that year. And I think even if that Bulls team had had a slightly different configuration, if MJ was there, I would not have bet against them. I just would not. Would it have been a less compelling long-term narrative for Michael Jordan if he lost in his final season? Yeah, I mean, that would have that would have softened the myth, I think. The fact that he gets to say, I won six of my, I finished the season, the champion in six of the seven final seasons is absolutely incredible.

I mean, there's really no precedent for that going back maybe to the Celtics in the 60s. So you're right, I still really would have wanted to see it even if he lost, though. Yeah, me too. And I think as a movie, I would have liked to have seen them interrogate the vacuum after that. Because like you said, him just being like, it's maddening that we didn't get to go. It's clearly something that keeps him up at night. It's clearly like an ulcer for him is the fact that they didn't go for seven. Ultimately, what did you think of the way that this film was the last dance?

But it was also trying to tell the story of somebody as immense as Michael Jordan in the fashion that it did with the sort of dueling timelines that start collapsing. on one another and also the way in which they used these supporting characters and would give them their entry into a collection of short stories about him. I thought it was effective. It felt like, and Jason Harris talked about this, it felt like both a virtue and a hang-up of needing it to be 10 hours. And Jason clearly didn't originally envision this as a 10-hour film. He envisioned it, I think it's a 4-hour film. And then it was extended to 8 and then it was extended to 10. I don't think you needed the story of Dennis Rodman. I don't think you needed even the life story of Scotty Pippen to make this film.

In fact, in the final two episodes, I was most compelled when it was focused solely on Michael. The psychological exploration of Michael and what drove Michael and Michael's friendships and Michael's enemies and the bitterness and that bizarre sense of competitiveness that we see all the way through the Brian Russell story and the way that he essentially destroys Brian Russell's soul. That was the movie to me. Now, the Dennis Rodman and Scotty Pipp and stuff, those are things that because they were necessarily more surface, I knew all of them. There was no new information there. There was new information in the MJ portions of the film

because there was so much depth and attention paid to them. I don't necessarily hold it against anybody. I pointed this out. The sequence of the worm in that first year with the Bulls set to Beastie Boys, the Maestro was just like the coolest NBA footage. I can recall seeing. You know, like his style of play, which also pissed me off as a fan, but was so incredibly effective.

And it probably helped me understand a little bit about what it means to play basketball that isn't just dunking on people. That was great, and I was happy to have it. I do think we could have gotten a film here that was a little bit more like there will be blood, was a little bit more like this deep psychological portrait of one crazed person as opposed to this spidering effect.

But it does also sets the foreground for when Rodman disappears to go to WCW during the finals. It sets the foreground for Scottie hurting his back and what that means and the counterbalance between them. So there was purpose in every choice. I appreciated the purpose. What did you think about the collapsing timelines? Did you feel like through 10 episodes that worked?

Yeah. I think of anything, I felt the stretching for 10 stuff towards the Utah stuff. Because I felt like we almost spent more time micro- analyzing the Utah series, then we did the, like, Detroit series, you know,

and, and, you know, the Jordan rules, and it was kind of like, I felt like that was brisk compared to how Utah is treated in the last two episodes. And if anything,

I think I would have probably had the stomach for them winning the title in the ninth episode and having the 10th episode be entirely about what happens right after that. And also maybe some, recognition of who is coming into the league. That idea that Jordan is looking around.

And not even like I need him to kind of go through, but like, what did he think of Iverson? And what did he think of Kobe? And what did he think of T-Mack? And what did he think of these guys who were obviously going to be the next generation of stars? What the timeline did do is allow this to be a story about the 90s, not just Jordan.

And that was, that's what I thought was really cool. And I thought there was a shot of Jordan leaving the United Center. Gosh, I can't remember after which game. It might have been one of the Indiana. games in the ninth episode. And it's his red Porsche with the air license plate. And it's, I think it's a last shot of the episode. And it's a woman standing in a pair of of mule shoes, which were kind of like popularized by Jennifer Anderson. And like she's just standing there. It's just

her foot as the car takes off. And I was like, that might be like a quintessential shot of the 90s. You know, you got Jennifer Aniston's shoes as Michael Jordan drives away in a vanity license plate Portia. And I actually thought, you know, using Pearl Jam as the last song was a very, you know, knowing gesture towards another group that have kind of weathered all of this and are still around and are still an important part of people's lives. Like Pearl Jam is, you know, equally, not equally to Michael Jordan, but like that it was like a very interesting nod towards that, you know, he knowingly didn't play like all apologies or something. It was, it was a Pearl Jam song, was a late Pearl Jam song. It was about what it's like to be your older.

yourself. But yeah, I mean, I've been thinking a lot about like, you know, people I think are saying like, oh, let's do the Tiger one next or let's do, let's do Ali next. And of course, you could do a lot of those things, but you'd be hard pressed to find somebody who explains a decade the way that Jordan did. You know, it's funny you say that. First of all, the Pearl Jam song, which is called Present Tense on No Code, which is secretly the best Pearl Jam album, my favorite Pearl Jam album. Perfect choice. The song choices throughout this entire series were just incredible. It's been written about in the times. Really, Jason and their whole team did just a genius job.

I thought of matching era, if not Michael's own taste with those times and that music. Also, special shout out to the scene with Michael dancing to the new Kenny Ladimore joint that he got as a bootleg, I guess. That was very funny. But, you know, I read a really interesting interview with Bomani Jones last night in The New Yorker. And Isaac Chautner was interviewing him about, you know, who Michael is and what he represents and his politics and his presence in the game. And Bhamani is so good at this.

Really made the point about something that is actually missing from the film to a small extent, which is that even though Michael dominated the 90s, he defined the 80s. He had more in common with Gordon Gecko and Bill Cosby than he did with Kirk Cobain. He was not this, he was not a Gen X figure. He was not a person who was cynical or doubtful about systems. He was not a person who was addled by culture and too much information. He didn't have the hallmarks of so many people who rose in the 90s. He was a slick, clean-cut, super-smart, savvy, ruthless competitor.

That was his persona, and he defined Reagan's America in many ways. And that is actually something that we did not get a lot of in the film. We saw his exploits as an athlete at that time, but there was not as much attention paid to his power as a cultural figure coming up through that time. You know, we hear from Michael Eric Dyson. We hear a bit about the Gant, the lack of supporting Gant in that race against Jesse Helms in North Carolina.

But there is an entire 10-hour documentary to be made about Michael Jordan in the 1980s that we didn't really see. And I don't think that's necessarily a missed opportunity. It just speaks to his power and it speaks to what it means to round into yourself in your 30s in a time in which. which even though he completely ran the 90s in our minds. I mean, he was renting space in our heads, Chris, as fans of teams in the Eastern Conference. We talked about this before.

Yeah. We, like, this was not us being to spend time with a guy we loved or cheered for. Yeah. Right. But he also was not a person who, like, he's two generations removed from me. You know, he's not, he's not even close to a contemporary for me. He's somebody. Yeah.

He was like one of my dad's asshole friends. You know, he just, he was very far away in terms. terms of not just being relatable as a person, but being relatable generationally and consciously, his goals were just so different. And I would encourage people to check out that Bomani interview. I thought it really laid out Jordan's impact on culture and Jordan's impact on the league, but also the fact that the movie is a 90s movie and Jordan is an 80s figure. That seemed to be the big takeaway for me. It's not even pushing back, but I will say that I thought that the person who did articulate how he, his sort of cultural importance,

to me at least, was really interesting, was Obama. And Obama comes in and is essentially like the non-Jordan hammer of this story. I guess the three

kind of most significant things at the end are, you know, Jordan saying, I would have come back. Then there is a kind of coda of talking about its importance.

And I think our Obama kind of articulates it in a, you know, rose-tinted lenses kind of way. Like, you know, he, he talks about

bringing American culture to the world. This idea of Jordan kind of being this global ambassador for not just basketball, but for American culture. To me, what he represents is I grew up at a time when, you know, these guys were paid really well, but sports was just sports. And there was like kind of a ceiling and a box. And you, you know, it was a way in which you could feel a part of a community and a city and your friends. You could talk about sports and how teams were doing or whatever. But at the end of the day, like,

sports were kind of like compartmentalized. And I, remember that era, not only for the way in which sports became this huge global business, but a lot of the things that I loved, like music or writing, it became corporate concerns. It became like, how do you make a big deal out of what you're doing? And it's like, well, you're just playing music. And it's like, no, no, no, no. How do you? Because they, like, that was a time when a lot of underground music became mainstream music. And to some extent, I always felt like basketball wasn't necessarily underground, but you had magic and bird, but there were a lot of fucking basketball players

that nobody had ever heard of. You know what I mean? Like most people who are in their 20s now don't know who Adrian Dantley was. Adrian Dantley was like a pretty big deal to me. You know what I mean? And I think of Jordan as the guy who brought like,

we can scale this man. Like we can make this bigger than anybody possibly ever thought. And that's only growing and growing. That's what LeBron has gone on to do even more. It's like, hey, you know what would be cool is if I play for three. re-teams and the story keeps changing and I hit another region and I get, you know,

another group of people can buy my jersey in a different color scheme and all this stuff that I think ultimately while Jordan was a samurai and obviously it was just like consumed with this idea of like, I need to win with these friggin' lunch pail guys in Chicago instead of trade me to New York, trade me to Indiana, trade me to the Lakers, whatever. he was the guy who just was like basketball is way bigger than you guys are actually seeing it as. Him and Stern just absolutely explode this sport. I think Stern has one of the most significant quotes in the whole film. He kind of underplay is actually Michael's importance in a perverse way.

But he says near the end of the film that before Michael came into the league, the NBA was in 80 countries. Today, it's in 220 countries. That's not like 220 states. that's 220 countries, that the sport is now legible to people around the world. In Asia, in Russia, in Europe, in Africa, it is everywhere. And yeah, I mean, he is the person most responsible for that. It's a little hard to overstate a person's importance.

And I agree with you, the using Obama as the hammer was fascinating. And I think that Obama was put in a interesting position in this film because Obama's politics and his tenure as the leader of this country are different, I would say, than the way that Michael Jordan led. You know, they don't have a lot in common as authority figures. And yet Obama was a Chicago resident, as the film points out, and a huge Bulls fan and has so much admiration for people who have the will to win. And so it's interesting to make him that voice.

You know, there's nobody in the film who comes out, maybe with the exception. of Charles Barkling is just like, this guy was just a ruthless motherfucker. He was just mean, tough, and never gave up. I hated playing him. He ruined my career. You know, like, there's nobody who,

and people did bring some kind of a sense of grace to the project, which I think is interesting given that Michael frequently did not have grace in victory. But that was the one thing that I thought was missing was one. And maybe this is because Michael's team didn't want it in the film. Maybe it's because no one would say it. Maybe it's because no one sought it. but no one said, man, fuck this guy.

This guy was so, so evil. And he destroyed me and he destroyed my dream. What about my dream of winning the NBA title? What about my dream of being the best player in the league? Nobody could muster it. Even Isaiah Thomas, who had this incredibly difficult and fraught relationship with Michael, he still was like, well, they beat us. No, I mean, you can make an argument that Isaiah Thomas is thought of in the same air of

Larry Bird, Magic Johnson. you know what I mean? If Michael doesn't come along and they don't really go full heel to stop him and also the Team USA stuff happens. I mean, it's really interesting. I mean, obviously, Isaiah did a lot to ruin his own legacy and, you know, going forward or to impact his own legacy at least. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there's a lost Derek McKee interview where he's just like,

man, fuck Michael Jordan. The one person who I thought was kind of a big loser of this film, just because he didn't sit for an interview as Carl Malone. Because Carl Malone, on the one hand in the film, seems to be like a pretty decent person. You know, that moment when he goes on the bus to congratulate the Bulls in 98 after they've won in their own building, I mean, he's in Utah. And obviously, he and Michael are friends. And they became friends on the dream team.

And Michael alludes to that in the film, too. But you see that Malone conducts himself with a kind of grace, but you don't hear from him. I mean, he really was, for lack of a better phrase, this is very oversimplified, but I think it is true. He really was the kind of the Tim Duncan of his era. You know, he had very, very little to say publicly. He was not a controversial figure. He played in a small market.

And he was absolutely dominant. He was unstoppable in his very discreet and specific style of play. Frequently, you would look up at the box score and he would have 32 and 14. And you'd be like, how the fuck did that happen? Like, how did, and they'd be winning by 18. And, you know, he lives a very private life now, like in Montana. And, you know, to not hear from him, I thought was a little bit strange because he's really the only person. He's really, I guess maybe with the exception of

Sean Kemp, who also gets a little bit of short shrift because he was so dominant in that Sonic's final series. But there's so few guys who just didn't sit for this. And so it sticks out. And you mentioned Reggie and we heard from Ewing and we heard from Bird and Magic and and Peyton and Barclay and everyone he vanquished except for Carl. Carl was really the truly great player of his time who doesn't sit for it. And I kind of wanted to hear from him. He's seem, maybe he was one of those guys who would have been like, fuck Michael. We'll never know. Yeah, I know. Maybe, uh, maybe there's like a kind of side chat between like Craig Elo, Brian Russell, like all the guys who absolutely got nuked by him and they're just like talking

on the side. We can wrap it up here, Sean. Any final thoughts? I mean, I'm just really grateful to have had this movie. I don't have any anxiety about whether or not it was like not an active journalism. I thought it was just like brilliant filmmaking, incredibly fun to watch. I loved being back in that time period because it just reminded me of being a kid and completely stymied by sports just as I am today. So that's great. That I'm never going to be able to be happy with sports. And Michael Jordan is not only singular, but still almost incomprehensible to me. What about you? Yeah. No, I think that it, like you said, I mean, it was not only a replacement for sports that are absent. It was a reminder of a much different time in my relationship to sports and a much different,

my expectations were a lot different, both in terms of like Michael did not allow for expectations, but also, you know, my relationship to sports back then was a lot less about sports as like a battlefield where a lot of like cultural issues were having a tug of war where we, you know, we talked about, we talk about things like player movement now and we talk about whether or not guys are worth their deals and whether or not, you know, everything is transactional and everything is kind of a narrative beyond what happens on the court. And to me, even though Michael had this huge impact off court, the legend was built on the court. The legend is built on those shots and the legend is built on those moments and the flu game or the pizza game or whatever you want to call

it now. And in some ways, like those moments are, they loom so large in my memory to see them reenacted almost was pretty amazing. Chris, before we go, do you want to claim credit for poisoning Michael and that pizza in Utah, was that you? It was a summer job. And me and my, sometimes, you know, with altitude sickness, me and my four buddies wanted to bring the pizza together. Shame on you, Chris.

Shame on you. Yeah. Sean, thanks for talking to me about Last Dance. We'll be back with our NBA show tomorrow with a mismatch. Thank you for listening.