The Ringer NBA Show - Instant Reactions to ‘The Last Dance’ Episodes 1-2 | The Ringer NBA Show

Episode Date: April 20, 2020

Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey convene for a special recap of ESPN's new Michael Jordan documentary, 'The Last Dance.' Episodes 1-2 bring us back to the beginning, where Michael Jordan was a fresh young face at the University of North Carolina. What memories did the documentary evoke, and what were the moments that gave us goose bumps? Hosts: Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and it's a charitable donation. Once again, that's the ringer.com slash WC. Oh, and welcome to the ringer. And the A show. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm an editor at the ringer.com. and joining me from Ithaca, six feet tall,

Sean Fennessey. Wow, the first of what will be many goosebumps on this podcast, Chris Ryan. What's up, man? We are here to talk about the first two episodes of the last dance on this special episode of the Ringer NBA show. Sean and I had been talking for a little while

about how to cover this 10-part Michael Jordan documentary that's airing on ESPN and we'll eventually be on Netflix. And we decided we'd recap, you'd recap these first two episodes and have a larger conversation about the documentary and Jordan's cultural and athletic impact, obviously. Mostly because this is, this is what we got. This is sports right now. You can feel it on Twitter. I would say you could feel it out on the streets, but the only people out on the streets are just joggers walking by and face masks.

But where I'd ask them, what are you doing this weekend? I think they would have said, I can't wait to watch this Michael Jordan documentary. It feels like it's replacing both peak primetime TV, prestige TV for people, and also sports. Sean, how are you feeling in the days leading up to, like, the anticipation leading to this Jordan documentary? Well, I see it in two lights, right? I see it as a person who's responsible for figuring out what to do in terms of covering sports and pop culture in my professional setting. And in that respect, it's immensely important. And between that and the NFL draft, it has been where most of our energy has gone over the last couple of weeks and where it will be for the next six weeks, I imagine. but as a person, I have an immensely complicated relationship with Michael Jordan. I am in awe and wonderment at his greatness. I loved watching him play.

And he also, he hurt me. I mean, he really, as a, as a sincere Knicks fan and Chris, you as a, also in the Atlantic Division,

a Sixers fan, I think, had your heartbroken. And especially, I mean, the greatest moments in Nick's history in my lifetime are also the worst ones because they were at their very best when Jordan was also at his very best.

So it's with some amount of frustration and resentment, but also just abject excitement to be teleported back to that moment with a movie. And you know how I feel about movies, Chris. Yeah, so let's do a little bit of background first on the movie because it's directed by Jason Hare. It comes from ESPN and is being sort of presented as in fashion. Like I think kind of like, I wouldn't say that they are going as high key as like it being like the OJ documentary.

It doesn't seem like they are necessarily putting this forward for like awards consideration right now. I think that could come. But it is obviously something that they have invested a ton of time and money into and are looking at as like the trophy of their non-scripted docs of like the last couple of years, pretty much since OJ. No question. Full disclosure, the director of this series is Jason Hare. the producer of the series is Mike Tolan, two friends of the Ringer. Jason directed the Andre the Giant film that Ringer films made for HBO. So just want to make sure that that's out front. But I think that you're right.

I think that this is a mini-series event that is very unusual for ESPN. And it does come bearing the burden a little bit of OJ. This has been a movie that I'm sure listeners of this podcast and others on the Ringer Network will know that Bill had been wanting to do a Michael Jordan documentary for many years. The rumors of this footage from this final season, it was understood that that had been floating in the world and trying to find a way to compel the participants to get involved, had been a long disgust in documentary circles. And it is prestigious, but it is also candy. You know, it does actually, I think one of the things that makes it work so well, I'm sure

we'll talk about it in depth, but particularly the fact that it isn't weighed down with a lot of sociocultural heaviness is part of what makes it so fun. It has ideas. It's interesting. It's very well made and very propulsive and compelling, but it doesn't feel like you've had a 800-page book dropped at your doorstep. It feels like returning to a 200-page book that you love. Yeah, and I would say that the thing that you immediately get, as you get into this documentary within about 15 minutes, is the sense that they are going to painstakingly recreate this last dance season from the off season on. And I mean, every few days, they're going to do, they have footage from every single game, every single practice, every single trip to Paris, every single offseason

event that they held. And the way in which that they essentially recreate a season, I found to be actually so what I needed right now. It was such a reward because I obviously missed the action of sports. I miss the daily routine of sports. But I think what I also miss is like somebody who was written about sports and talked about it for most of his life at this point is the narrative and the context around a season and the idea of following a team. And while I'm obviously very familiar with what happened in the 97-98 season, I obviously don't remember like them playing the clippers on the road.

You know, and it's like that level of detail and also the level of recall that the talking head seemed to have for every single nuanced moment, it's essentially a time machine. So I think that, and we'll be talking about the first two episodes which aired tonight, and the first episode focuses on

sort of the rise of Jordan, his collegiate career, as a sort of background to what's happening in that 97-98 season. And then in the second episode, there's a big focus on Scotty Pippin and his role as Robin to Jordan's Batman. But I found something really,

fascinating about this that probably isn't a surprise to people who follow basketball closely. And you have been as much a participant and an observer of this as anybody in the last 10 years where the heavy interest in the sport of basketball has shifted not just from what happens on the court, but to what the machinations of the game are. And this movie certainly has James worthy talking about the 1982 NCAA championships. That's great stuff. You can find that on NBA TV every day. There is content like that constantly. where you're seeing great players talk about great moments in their careers, observing the greatness of other players,

and having that recall of an incredible play, an amazing shot, et cetera, et cetera. The thing about this movie is, there are long stretches of it in which it is primarily about Jerry Krauss, Jerry Rinesdorf, and Phil Jackson's ability to acquire players, draft players, manage players' egos.

That's the sort of stuff that is pretty uncommon. You're not likely to see nearly as much of that in those kinds of classical, you know, depictions of NBA history on channels owned by the, you know, owned by the league. So I was as captivated as much by the kind of free agency acquisition, wheeler, dealer, off-court stuff. And that's before we've even gotten to the kind of economic rise of Jordan as a social figure, you know, the sneaker magnate and all this stuff that I'm sure is going to be coming very soon on the series. So it really kind of has something for modern fans.

It has something for fans who were there when they wanted it. it and it does have this extraordinary amount of detail. You're right. And it's so crucial that they're telling it in this kind of dual structure where they're going minute by minute through the 97-98 season and then using that as like a platform to do these flashbacks, as you said, to North Carolina in the first episode into a lot of Scotty Pippen's background in Arkansas in the second episode. But it's, I think, really key that this doc, granted, a lot of it is based on this found footage that they had or this footage that had been long rumored to exist of this last season. But we're catching the end of the dynasty.

This is a fall, not necessarily a rise. Obviously, we know how it ends. But I think it makes for so much more compelling viewing to tell these backstories and these flashbacks through the lens of and then it all kind of was coming to an end than it is to be like, here's how Michael Jordan brought together Steve Kerr, Scotty Pippen, Phil Jackson, and they became the team of the 90s. I mean, it's a really slick storytelling technique. Yeah, one of the most resonant moments for me in the whole first two episodes was the moment when Michael Jordan learns that Scotty Pippen has demanded a trade request. And Jordan is surrounded by reporters and a reporter directly asks him, what's your response

to that? And Jordan gives a non-answer. He says, I really don't have anything to say about that. But the look on his face is extraordinary. And it is a reflection of what you're describing. It is, this is the end. They know it's the end. And what an extraordinary circumstance in professional sports. Imagine if before the last Warriors season, Kevin Durant came forward and said, this is my last season with the Warriors.

We will win the title. We're all together one last time. I want to do this together. As opposed to, well, you know, I'm just focused on the season. I just want to see how this plays out. I'm really focused on right now and playing with my teammates and focusing on improving as a player. You know, there was a known quantity aspect.

to this being the end of what they were doing together publicly, which is people are so unwilling to kind of share that pursuit. Like we didn't get it this year in front of the New England Patriot season. Yeah, and I would even say that while your analogy is really good, it doesn't necessarily speak to the level of which people were, there was like people who liked the Sixers or the Pacers or the NICS or the Lakers. And then there were Michael Jordan fans. And so you have to understand that this kind of like transcended NBA fandom in general.

But the Patriots, so many people hated the Patriots. So many people didn't care about the Patriots because Tom Brady wasn't on their fantasy team or they were Jaguars fans or something like that. But you're right. I mean, to imagine Belichick doing a press conference where he was like, this will be Tom Brady's last season for the New England Patriots, that we would have like, Skip Bayliss would have just lit himself on fire on camera. It would have been, it would have been absurd.

And you're right that it doesn't even speak. to the power of Jordan, which I don't know. I mean, can we just talk a little bit about the specter of Jordan? And I think especially specifically working professionally and increasingly spending more and more time working with people who were either not alive for

the height of Jordan's fame and success or people who have really tracked their NBA fandom by the LeBron generation and the way that LeBron has completely overtaken the sport and redefined the sport. And this uneasy divide for anybody who's sort of, I would say it's 34, 35 and under, and then 34 and up. And that is really the, you have to choose your, choose your fighter in a sense between Jordan and LeBron and like what that

tension has been. Like, you've edited thousands of NBA pieces. Like, what do you make of, um, the way that Jordan's depicted here, does it kind of live up to how just overwhelming he was as a, as a sports and cultural figure? I think that for as much as it speaks to, um, it speaks to, a different time in the sport itself in terms of how it was played in terms of the way that a lot of teams would orient themselves around one player to be like the kind of

to bear a lot of the weight for the offense. What it really speaks to is just what a sea change to this game has gone under psychologically and perception wise. LeBron for as hostile as he may or may not be at certain times for as much as cutthroat as he can be about rebuilding teams that he's on or demanding that certain personnel moves be made or not.

I don't think it compares at all to the stuff you see from Jordan and how on Front Street he was about the only thing that really mattered to him was not just winning but dominating. And his pursuit of that was something that I think was like, at times made basketball difficult to love for me in the 90s. You know, like you were saying, like it didn't seem really up for debate whether or not they would win the title every year. It just really didn't.

And it kind of snuffed out a little bit of the passion or at least a little bit of the surprise that can sometimes come with sporting events. You just knew that at the end of the day, this guy was going to put the opposing team in a sleeper hold. I think you and I have a little bit of a different philosophy about this when it comes to sports. I tend to be a fan of dynasties.

I tend to be a fan of dominant figures, not in terms of my rooting interest per se, but sort of what they mean for the sport and whether they keep the sport on rails. You could make the case, obviously, that Bird and Magic set the NBA on trajectory to become a hugely important sport in America. And then Jordan essentially, you know, completed the al-Upe.

His six titles and his reign with the Bulls set the league on a course that, I don't think anybody saw coming in the 70s or sense that it could even happen. as a fan and as a as a kid really, it was demoralizing. I mean, it was just straight up punishing. I was just listening to the low post with Mike Breen

earlier this week and Breen recalling, you know, the Charles Smith game and the way that those Bulls games just terrorized my memory of the sport. And yet, I mean, that's really where my fandom was fortified in a way. Now, those NICs teams were a big part of that and they were a significant team of the era. The Sixers were not really as competitive at that time, I feel like. No, there were some really good Barclay teams.

obviously coming out of the Irving, the doc era of 83, the peaks in 83. But I think it was more just like, I loved basketball and more I was very much a part of the cultural moment that was happening between the NBA and the rise of hip hop. And I think that this documentary does a nice job of playing era-specific hip-hop for different eras of Jordan highlights. You know, playing Eric B and Rock Em for that first rookie season is really cool. But Jordan, I think I love Jordan more as the guy in the Mars Blackman commercials than I did as a basketball player who the Sixers sometimes had to get decapitated by. Yeah, we're going to have to see if the movie tries to delineate those two Jordans. You know, like how self-aware, how self-conscious will it be?

Because it does seem like it will be very unvarnished. We're definitely going to get some raw and complicated conversations about things that Jordan has done. I suspect they'll get into the Republicans buy sneakers. Two. Controversions. I think that obviously the murder of his father is a tragic event, his decision to leave the game and go play minor league baseball. There's all kinds of controversy surrounding his career, but he does have this almost like intellectual duality where he is the ultimate pitchman, the ultimate, you know, your hero and your friend. And simultaneously, that thing that you were describing a few minutes ago, which was just this vicious, almost deliriously competitive person. who would spare no expense to cut your throat. And those two things just don't wash. I mean, they're so in opposition to each other. And he yet somehow managed to marry those two personas together to create kind of the ultimate famous person, the ultimate athlete.

And LeBron, for all of his extraordinary achievements, I love watching him play. I'm in awe of him, just like so many other people. I feel like I have too much access to what's in his head. I feel like I have too much access to his thought process. I often think about the way he got raked over the Coles for just being friends with rival players. You know, like having a friendship with Carmelo and Chris Ball and how that seemed like somehow, I don't know, like a disparagement of the competitive nature of the 1990s. Well, there's also the, I think, a big thing that is a theme of the last dance is the idea of Jordan almost taking it as a personal challenge to win with the people he has around him. because at this point in the 97-98 season,

in the summer before that season, Scotty Pipp and elects to get ankle surgery, which they get into a lot in episode two. And he, because he doesn't want to, he waits to get his surgery because he doesn't want to fuck his summer up, basically. So he wants to be able to enjoy his summer without having to rehab,

and then he gets surgery closer to the start of the season so that he misses the first few months of the 97-98 season, and obviously also requests to trade somewhere in there. And Jordan's forced to play with, Ron Harper, Luke Longley, Tony Kookech, Bill Wennington, Steve Kerr, you know, decent role players, but certainly nobody on par with Scotty Pippen. And I'm not going to say that LeBron would like shirk from that, but like, or shy away from that challenge or something. I mean, LeBron has played with some pretty crappy teams. But I think that when you get people who are like,

I think LeBron's incredible, LeBron's one of the great, probably the greatest athlete I've ever seen in my lifetime. I think he is a better athlete than Jordan. I think he does things on the court that I've never seen anybody do. LeBron did change teams several times. LeBron definitely was like, I need to be in a situation, whether it's a different infrastructure or a different personnel grouping. And I need to start the clock over again. And it's not really, I'm not saying one is better than the other, but when you watch Jordan destroy guys in the second episode of this show and just scream at guys about their behavior. It's kind of hard to imagine LeBron sticking it out in Cleveland and like yelling at Boobie Gibson for years. You know what I mean? I do. I think it's not over

the top to say that there is a clear generational divide here. And specifically, I noticed this so much in the modern day and the present day conversations that Jordan is having in this film. He consistently returns to the idea of the team and what's right for the team. And there's an Interesting back and forth about the comments that Jerry Krause made about how players don't win titles and coaches don't win titles, organizations do. And then there's some sort of examination of what he actually meant when he said that and whether he was misquoted or not. But Jordan is, he identifies that players are the most important part of winning a title. But then he also consistently returns to this almost like military attitude about the equality and the necessity of being together. on a team. It contrasts with his personal view of his own dominance, but it's not something,

it feels like a remnant of another era. It feels like there is, there has obviously been a lot of conversation in the last five years about player empowerment and getting out of circumstances to better your own circumstance, to get more money, to get more opportunities to win, to play with your friends. All of that makes sense in the present context and the way that NBA owners treat their players. This is a slightly different time. But Michael Jordan's view seems so old-fashioned and so, you know, not conservative in the political sense, but conservative in a kind of like an intellectual way where he just couldn't imagine leaving the Bulls to go play for another team during that 1984 to 1998 period. And yet, at times, they just really didn't take care of his teammates. They didn't manage the team effectively.

They do go out and acquire Horace Grant and Scotty Pippininan during the first run. Then they do go out and acquire Dennis Rodman during the second run. but also the way that Scotty is treated is a reflection on how Jordan's going to feel about the prospect of trying to win a title. It's just a fascinating, very specific example. Yeah, I mean, Jordan's best friend on the Bulls is Oakley, and he's like, I liked Oakley,

but Bill Cartwright was the right choice. Yeah, that's the same thing in terms of like analyzing the way that these teams are built and the personnel stuff. I mean, I wish that Oak got a chance to address that specific concern. I found an interesting that he was interviewed here, but also did not talk about getting traded away from those bulls teams and getting traded to those next teams, which never got over the hump against those

bold teams. I mean, what a sliding doors moment for him. Yeah, absolutely. Why don't we go through, I basically have some like categories that we can run through somewhat rewatchable style, and we can just group the two episodes together. I wanted to talk a little bit about, I mean, the thing that I really got from this, I went into this with like the same kind of cynicism or skepticism that I think anybody our age does, which is like, what else is there to learn? about Michael Jordan and what else is there to learn about 90s basketball. And I think that this thing is a goose bump machine. Like I started this episode, the first episode, and I was like, well, I'm, I know what I'm doing for the next couple weeks. I know how I'm spending my time. I know what I'm

to be thinking about. I found that the hair on the back of my neck stood up multiple times, but I wanted to ask you, Sean, for the first episode, what was your big goose bump moment? I think it's probably the shot. the 1982 shot and the recollection of the shot and the sense that the stakes of college basketball were so high. That was the fucking best, man. So important.

And doesn't that feel like a million years ago? And it's just so incredible to watch Worthy and Ewing have instant recall for that, for reversing the play to get the ball to Jordan for the shot. It had completely, I had completely forgotten too that Roy Williams was an assistant coach on that team. And so him being there and just to be able to talk about MJ and being so close to MJ.

And I don't know. What do you think about this idea that sometimes in the aftermath players opponents will oversell the excellence of those opponents in an effort to kind of seem more special? That their period was more was more essential. Like do you think that somehow like legacy grows too big when you look back and format like this. Yeah, I mean, I think that's inevitable. I think that whenever you're asking, I mean, if you and I were to talk about one another, I think that we would necessarily inflate the importance of the two of us because

of the act, through the act of recounting that story. Do you know what I mean? The greatest podcaster of all time, Chris Ryan, the Swiss army knife of potting? I was sitting there and Chris was on WordPress and he hit paragraph and then we'd cut away and then Malar Rubin would be like, yeah, he hit paragraph. It was amazing. No, I think that your point is well taken, but I then encounter to that, I offer up the 60,000 people at the New Orleans Superdome watching Patrick Ewing, James Worthy, and Michael Jordan

playing a national championship game. I mean, it's just, you get the feeling. And look, like, I'm all for, I think their college basketball, like everybody else, is essentially like an unfair sham. But the importance of college basketball in people's, lives back then and up through, I don't know, like the late 90s, it's pretty, it's, it can't be overstated, like the way in which that would capture, capture the imagination. And what a run for college hoops back then. You know, we had the, the North Carolina teams in the early 80s, that Villanova team a couple years later, the presence of Georgetown as both like a thing people cheered for, but hated and then UNLV and then Michigan. I mean, what a time. You know what I mean?

what a great 15, 20 years there. It was a huge part of my life. I've talked about it before on Pods, but I was at Alumni Hall eight, 10 times a year watching St. John's games. It was just a really big part of my preteen and teenage years. And it does feel very far away. And moments like this are interesting, too,

because Jordan was, I think he's a freshman in the 82 season, and, you know, was not a highly, highly touted recruit. He was a good recruit, but not a highly touted guy. And there's that incredible, worthy moment when he talks about how he, was better than Jordan for like two hours. You know, the fact that this was a person who, part of the myth making going on in this series is his dogged determinism to be the best.

And there is such a kind of fascinating like bootstraps, your mind is more powerful than your body aspect to the Jordan story. And it really feels like it starts here. Like here's the moment when he's like, you know what, I'm going to take the shot. I'm the best player. I'm the most important person here and I'm going to make it and then I'm going to build my my legend through this moment. And so much of this stuff in this film I can tell is some of it's going to be tragic and

some of it's going to be frustrating, but so much of it is just going to be like the extraordinary willpower of Michael Jordan to make things happen. And this is like the native incident. My goosebumps moment for the first episode was the first playing of Sirius, the Alan Parsons project song, which served as the bull. intro music and they play it as the bulls are going on court in Paris during an exhibition game. And, you know, if you want to watch preseason basketball, you see a lot of these exhibition games, they're just, they're really stupid.

There's nobody's trying, you know what I mean? Like, the players don't want to be there. It showed to me, first of all, just that song, you're just like, oh, yeah, from North Carolina, six, six. but it's also like the circus, the rolling, the traveling circus that was the Bulls in the late 90s. And, you know, like we went through it probably a little bit more consciously with the Heatles, with the Miami Heat Team when LeBron and Wade and Bosch were together. And the idea that every team, every city that they visited became like the epicenter of sports for that night.

But just to see, just to see the international appeal of the team and to see them first run out, when they get the rings at the end of the episode to get the, and the music is playing. It was just like the theatricality of that team really came through. It's a great call. The other thing, you already kind of mentioned that Eric B. and Rakim's Aino joke is used in the early stages of Jordan's NBA career.

And that highlight reel is mind-blowing. Like watching him, his athleticism against everybody else on the court is so wild. there's a couple of moments with Sidney Moncrief from the Bucks talking about what it was like to face Jordan in the NBA in those early days. And this kind of goes to that, like how you talk about your time in the league and whether or not it was the most important time. But Moncrief, who is, you know, one of the most elite defenders in NBA history, two-time defensive player of the year and a good offensive player in his own right is just like helpless. This guy was the best thing I've ever seen. Like there was nothing I could do to stop him, which, you know, that's pretty powerful.

You know, that's like Kauai saying, I don't know what to do with Kevin Durant. Like, I don't know how to guard him. You know, that's, it's just, it's, it's very uncommon to hear some, hear players talk that way about their opposition. Yeah, and just the idea that I love the, the specificity of identifying, like, Jordan being like, the bucks always beat us. And like, they wanted me, you know, they, they, we were losing. And all the guys on the team were quitting. You see, like, Orlando Woolridge and Rod Higgins and everybody. And Jordan was like, we're not losing.

Like, I'm not losing again. And that was the thing that he had that only like maybe eight, 10 people like him in the history of sports really had that. Like, if I am here, the expectation is that we win this game. Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I just wanted to make sure you were listening to podcasts on Spotify. Here's how you do it. First, search for your favorite podcasts on Spotify's app. They have a library of over 750,000 podcasts at the store.

point. So let's say you're searching for the Bill Simmons podcast with rewatchables or Dave Chang Show or binge mode or the ring our NFL show. Once you find them, click on the follow button. That's how you subscribe. Then click on those letters near the top of the app that say podcasts. You can't miss it. All the podcasts you're following will pop up separated by episodes, downloads, and shows. Wait, it gets better. On Spotify, you can adjust the speed of the pods to seven different speeds. Zero point five times is the slowest. I actually sound drunk at 0.5. Listen to this. Yeah, you can get drunk bill. You can also do 0.8 times, 1.2 times, which is my favorite. Everyone sounds like they had a good cup of coffee.

You can do 1.5 times. You can do 2 times. And if you're completely insane, you can do 3 times. Here's what that sounds like. Why would you do that? I think that's how we communicate with aliens. Anyway, Spotify's app connects directly to many of the best automobiles in the world. It even has a car play feature. That's pretty cool. It's really, really good. Best of all, it's free. Download Spotify on any device, and you are good to go.

Look, I don't want to app shame you, but you should actually be embarrassed if you're not listening to a podcast on Spotify. And if you don't believe me, listen to Drunk Bill at 0.5 speed. Today's episode of the Bill Simmons podcast. Tell him, Drunk Bill, the Bill Simmons podcast. Listen on Spotify. What did you think about the way that they portrayed the 84 draft? I thought it was really interesting. You know, it's cool to go back to it.

It's obviously one of the great what-ifs of NBA history. It's nice, it's kind of funny that even now, some of the talking heads, all the talking heads they talk to, it's like you take a Keem 10 times out of 10. You know, like there's no revisionist history about him going number one to Houston. obviously the buoy over Jordan pick has been memorialized as one of the great mistakes in NBA history. And just to have all that, all those guys being like, yeah, you can't take a 6-6-6 guy. That's crazy. You know, it's like that kind of guy can't be the best player in your team. And so that going back and watching Mark Eaton be like, well, this person can't possibly make a difference.

What did you think? Did you get a lot of good Rod Thorne time in this episode? There was some solid Rod Thornton time who, you know, frankly just lucked into Michael Jordan. I mean, I don't know what else to say about that. Tough look for Clyde Frazier, saying that a guard can't be the most dominant player on a team right at the advent of guards completely taken over the NBA for 20 years.

And Portland had Clyde Drexler, so why would you also need Michael Jordan? Yeah. You know, that's a tough footnote in Clyde's career, who's obviously Hall of Famer, great player, one of the great two guards of all time. But it's funny. Like, that's an example of a story that, unlike some of the other stories we're going to see in this film,

I know really well, and I've read about a lot, and, you know, Bill and his book has written about it, and it's been talked about over and over again. And still, I find, like, we're doing it with the redraftables. I find the alternate histories of drafts so compelling. I actually could have just gone for an entire episode dedicated to that. But then, and then the other aspect of it, too, that I thought was fascinating was the presence of Larry Bird and Magic and the way that they talked about MJ. And I suspect we'll get more of that, but, you know, that series between. the Celtics and the Bulls. Yeah. You know, where Jordan goes for 110 points over two nights is, you know, I definitely watched that and was a kid watching it. And just remember having just my brain melting watching Jordan go for, was it 603? Danny Angel's brain melted too. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh my God. Can we talk about Jordan the golfer? Yeah. Well, let's say, I would say that, you know, we can just say our good goosebumps moments for episode two. I had, mine was Jordan yelling at dudes in practice. Just because one of the things that gave me goosebumps was like,

we remember from a couple years ago when the late Kobe Bryant cursed out the entire Lakers team. It was like screaming at Mitch, like, like about, it was a waste of his time. It was almost uncanny how much it mimicked what Jordan was yelling at the players on the practice court in the second episode. So that was my goosebumps. But was your goosebow moment in the second episode, the Celtic series? Yeah, it was either that or, yeah, yeah, it was probably that.

It was probably just bird genuflecting at the Jordan altar. And both in present day and then also that locker room interview where he's just like, he's the best player in the league. He's the most talented player in the league. I mean, imagine Larry Bird saying that about you. If you've only been in the league for six years. And he's one of the five greatest players of all time at that point. I don't know.

It's pretty. that's the first part of the movie that I have specific memories about. I'm 37. So that's early 90s. Yeah. And that's really when I have a consciousness as an NBA fan. So it was exciting to be drawn back into that moment. What was something from the first episode where you did, like, you were like, I did not know that.

Like, you were like, this is a genuinely, like, new piece of information or, like, a new piece of insight. I mean, you made a note about this, but I just didn't realize that the Bulls in 1985 were just a bunch of drug lords. Like that was quite a revelation. And, you know, Jordan's teetotaler identity is kind of interesting because in this movie, he shot, you know, with a glass of Hennessy at his side the whole time. I mean, Jordan now we know, likes to smoke cigars. He likes to drink. He likes to tie one on from time to time. And to think of him as this sort of innocent body temple teenager, it's hilarious.

I, you know, there's still so much untold about early 80s and late 70s NBA. I don't think we'll ever hear about it. Yeah. I think that's about as, it seemed about as, like, candid as the NBA was willing to get about it. I mean, the moment where the interviewer off screen tells Michael Jordan that there was an article about the mid-80s bulls that called them the Bulls traveling cocaine circus. And Jordan just like cackles for like eight seconds and then goes, I never read that article. But then he tells that vivid story about knocking on the hotel room door.

But crucially, it wasn't as much a body as temple thing as much as he was like, if I get in, if this place gets rated, I get in as much trouble as all the guys do in Coke. It was a business decision in some ways. It's a good point. You're right. That is, that's what that was the calculus that he was doing. As far as like the stuff I, and you alluded to this, but as far as the stuff I, I did not know from the second episode, it was definitely off day golf with Danny Ainsch.

That's like you golfing with the hosts of, pardon my take, I think. That's right. It's me being big cap. Before a Sunday night podcast showdown, you know, could you picture it? I could. Yeah, you know, we're definitely putting up the same numbers. So, no, yeah, of course. It's, it's, you know, Jordan is the ultra-competitive. you don't really think of him as hanging out with the opposition very much but even in this context it was obvious that they were playing for a lot of money

and that there was a lot of shit talking going on and just the fact that Jordan getting dropped off and telling the rest of the van like telling Ainge and whoever else is in the car tell DJ I got something for him tomorrow night and then he did incredible

awesome moment you think Jordan's a good hang I think if you're like in with him, it's elite. I think if you were just like on the outside of it and he doesn't necessarily know or respect to you, I think you're in for a long night. I have to admit that I feel like Jordan would treat me more like Jerry Krauss than Charles Oakley.

You know what I mean? I feel like he would do a lot of ball busting, a lot of like, what are you doing here? He would take a lot of my money, you know, get me really fucked up, get me really drunk. Speaking of one of my favorite parts of this second episode

is Jerry Rinesdorf consistently going over the top of Jerry Kraus to like lightly dunk on him despite employing him for 15 years. Yeah. Specifically resigning Phil Jackson to a one-year contract, which again is just

the present day stuff is so interesting because the figures by that time are so fraught, you know, and they're so like in the consciousness this as famous people. They, stuff in the early 80s, they seem like little kids. But by the time you get to 97, 98,

and there's the, you know, was it Jerry Krause's kids wedding? It's his stepdaughter's wedding, and he invites everybody around the team, including Tim Floyd, who was then the Iowa State coach, to this wedding, except Phil Jackson.

And Reinsdorf, and this is a good segue, because I wanted to ask about talking head MVP's, Rinesdorf says something basically like, I would do anything not to get invited to a wedding. He's like,

if I didn't get an to a wedding, I would be so excited. But apparently this was a bad thing to not invite Phil. Yeah, Rinesdorf comes through a couple of times

over the first two episodes with some very droll observations and has a real throwback to the pre-Hedge fund bro NBA owner of like local business titan usually just absolutely loathed locally.

You know, like, nobody was hated like the guy who had 15 car lots, like car dealerships, and also owned the hockey team. Yeah, he is a throwback. I mean, he's still there. He's still, you know, he and his family are still in charge.

But he did keep that team together for the most part. I mean, he did, he didn't, he didn't pull the Mets trade Tom Seaver. You know, like he didn't trade Scotty Pippen. He didn't not resign. and Phil Jackson to that contract. I know that Chicagoans have a complicated relationship with the Reinsdorf's,

but I mean, he did, in effect, put that team in a position to win six titles in nine years. And frankly, they, you know, they probably wouldn't have won nine in nine years, as Bill and Rasillo pointed out last week because of just how difficult it would have been to keep that machine rolling for all that time. But, I mean, the other thing that's cool about it is, you know, you get obviously people like Mike Wilbon, who is from Chicago and who has a famed relationship and is an ESPN figure, but you also get Rick Talander and Sam Smith, and you get this generation of newspaper writers who were there for the Jordan woman. It was so plugged in. Yes. Sam Smith used to, I mean,

there's a great shot of Jackson talking to Pete Vessie, some B-roll of him doing like what was obviously like an NBC NBA interview, I guess, because that's, I think Vessie used to come on and do kind of interstitials on the NBC coverage, but, you know, the intimacy that these beat writers had, you know, Sam Smith obviously knows what the Pippin perspective Pippin deals would have been. You know what I mean? Like, he's so keyed in. And you know Krause like to talk. I mean, one of the big things is like, it's a, it's a real shame that Kraus isn't in this dock, that he didn't live to be in this dock. But in a weird way, you know, his. presence in it is kind of this interesting kind of like ghost in the machine, you know?

I think you can't overlook the fact that people were just so much more open about talking to the media at this at 25, 30 years ago. Like there's just, there was so much more access. And it's not that level of access where you could sit in a locker room for 45 minutes and then go to a two hour dinner necessarily with players like you could in the 70s. But even in the late 90s, I mean, Sam Smith could pick up the phone and call any of these people. Yeah. And ask them what was going on. I mean,

that's just, that's just not something that happens now. And there was a level of respect and openness around the media at that time. That was really powerful. And it also just makes for, like, great gossip. You know, they just had more information.

They had more fun shit to tell you. Yeah, I love to, I love Aldridge was good too in these, you know, talking about Scotty Pippen's contract. Tell me, tell me who you're talking head,

MVP was for the first episode. For me, I think corny and homespun as it is it's going to be Roy Williams. He's really great. He turns in a great performance. His line, Michael Jordan's the only player that could ever turn it on and off, and he never friggin' turned it off.

I also really like James Worthy saying, I was better than Michael Jordan for two weeks. Yeah, that's probably my pick. That's the best moment in that first episode, that whole Carolina run. Yeah. It's great. It's also cool to imagine how he wanted to stay. You know, it's like, you hear this a lot from guys like Rashid Wallace wanted to stay at Carolina, like all these guys who were like, this is the most fun I'm ever going to have in my life is being at college like this.

Pretty good ode to Dean Smith too, who I think similarly to the NBA players of this period is like as time goes on, you know, is memorialized as this important figure. but you don't really like see or truly hear about who he is or what he did. And, you know, this is, this is him kind of at the height of his greatness too. Yeah. For episode two, my talking heads, I had, I had Ainge. I also had Steve Kerr. And somewhat Kerr, when they're doing the interviews on the court with Kerr, when he was a player,

you can start to hear the flying coach Steve Kerr kind of emerging there. He has that incredible quote where he's like, What is the one thing that we don't have? And he's like, well, we have Michael, you know? And it's just this like very dry, dry, but completely accurate delivery. And he looks virtually exactly the same. Steve Kerr has an age today from 1998. And yeah, that jumped out at me too.

I mean, Kerr, in the present day, it's funny to see him like kidded out in the Warriors gear because that is his identity. But he was a bull in my mind, more than a spur. more than any other team he played for. He went to Arizona, right? More than Arizona. Yeah, he was a big. He played with Sean Elliott, I think.

That's right. But he was always a bull in my memory for years and years and years until the last five years. What about any other talking heads from episode two? Got Danny Angel. Danny Angel was obviously really good. Yeah, I mean, I mentioned the bird stuff. I just think bird and then, you know, I was recently rewatching the documentary about the first dream team. on NBA TV. And there's a lot of footage in that movie about the relationship between Magic

and Michael and how competitive magic was with Michael at that time because Magic had recently been diagnosed with HIV. And he was sort of exiting his fate, the magic era of the NBA. He was still dominant player, but he wasn't at the, he wasn't at his apex. And the very sparing amount of time that he gets in the first two episodes of this series, he's very direct. He's just like Michael is the best. Like Michael was the best. And I hope that we get a little bit of the magic

who is a little bit unwilling to seat his throne in this documentary too because their big brother little brother relationship and the way that magic would use his kind of wilyness as a way to talk down to Michael during that dream team era. Because Michael hadn't really won very much at that time. And that is what magic is hoarding over him.

I think it would be fun to see some of that stuff. Yeah, it would also be fun to see any of Bill Clinton's scout breakdowns of other Central Arkansas players. Yeah, should we talk about the two presidents that appear in this film? Yeah, good get. Good pull. That's what you know it's an event when they got Barack Obama and Bill Clinton to sit down. I'm on my seventh email of trying to book Tony Dalton from Better Call Saul on the watch. And it's like, yeah, there's Bill Clinton and Barack Obama doing like, five seconds on Scotty Pippin and Michael Jordan.

It's just amazing. I mean, and that's the other thing, too, is that that 98 team and those Bulls teams found ways to intersect with culture so profoundly. You know, Barack Obama saying he couldn't afford tickets to go see those Bulls teams when he was broke in the 80s is fascinating. You know, Clinton talking about watching Scottie Pippen play high, is it high school basketball? No, it's college in central Arkansas. Okay, college.

I mean, that's just remarkable. Bill Clinton sounds like a guy calling into sports radio on Friday Night Lights. He's like, that's Scotty Pippin. He's got some good inside outside moves. But also like reflecting on his personality and talking about how shy he was. And I don't know, everything just feels very intimate in this series. You know, it really does. It feels like the people know each other to this day. And that's just not that common on these documentaries, which as much as I love just firing up the NFL network and and watching a two-hour segment about Brett Favre in Green Bay.

It doesn't always feel, it feels stage managed. And so far, this just doesn't feel that stage managed to me. Obviously, people are performing in a way when the camera turns on. But it feels like they really know each other and they're really telling stories. It's true. It really is as much as a story about Jordan. It's like the story about a generation of sports and sports fans, too. What do you want to see going forward? I think in terms of the flashback stuff, I'm certainly, I'm interested in more moments that tell stories behind the stories that get into the, what are the other golfing with Danny Aange moments during some famous playoff sequences? And I think that, so I think it's that. I think it's the getting the details behind the iconic moments.

It'll be interesting to see if, I suspect that as the series goes on, we'll spend more time in that last season and less time in the past. because they really did speed through a lot of the first 10 years of Michael Jordan's playing career. And we may go back even further. Maybe we'll go into more about his parents and when they get to the death of his father. Maybe they'll talk more about his family. But I'm curious to see, like you said, a deeper analysis of what was going on in that season. Because that is like the draw. That's the elevator pitch for the movie.

That's what makes it different, I think, from some of this, this. this other kind of historical sports archival documentary that we see all the time. But I don't know. I mean, it's off to an amazing start. Yeah, the last thing I was going to ask you is if you had any favorite, we've covered a lot of it, but if you had any favorite Jordan talking head moments, because I do find him to be a very interesting narrator, more than I thought. You know, obviously his public appearances have been, you know, like the Hall of Fame induction speech that he gives where he's like, you know, just absolutely laying waste to people, but also crying. His very moving eulogy for Kobe Bryant.

But I find him to be quite funny and also still carrying the burden of that competitive streak that he has. 100%. It's fascinating that he in this episode just still talks very frankly about Scotty. And he says simultaneously, he's the best teammate I ever had.

And I think you can say without a doubt that Michael does not win six titles without Scotty, but also that he still kind of holds it against him that he waited to get that surgery. And that he describes it as selfish and only thinking about himself. And he has this kind of old school mentality about that that I thought was so interesting that he's just not willing to give that up. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I'm really looking forward to the rest of this. And I'm really excited also to see we're recording this on Friday. So we don't know how like Twitter is going to react to it. But if like the reactions to like random rapper going on IG live are any indication, I think that people are. like a lot of people are going to pay attention and participate in the conversation around this,

which I think should be pretty neat. We need to get a meme going of Jordan during that cackling moment when he gets read the quote about the cocaine circus with the Hennessy behind him. And like that screenshot of him like back on his feels laughing. Yeah, with the cocktail is that's the next great meme. Yeah. Sean, thank you so much for joining me. I'm sure KOC and Verno will be talking about the Jordan doc on the mismatch.

And we have plenty of stuff on the site and on. Bill and Ryan's pods. So it's really Jordan all the time until we get some real basketball. Thanks, buddy.