The Ringer NBA Show - Instant Reactions to ‘The Last Dance Episodes 5-6 | The Ringer NBA Show

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

Justin Verrier and Rob Mahoney come to you immediately after the conclusion of the fifth and sixth episodes of ‘The Last Dance.’ On this week’s pod: an examination of Michael Jordan’s trip to Atlantic City during the 1993 playoffs, a window into the unique pressure Jordan faced every time he stepped out of his hotel or home, and what NBA Twitter would have to say about the ascension of Jordan the shoe mogul. Hosts: Justin Verrier and Rob Mahoney Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. I wanted to tell you about a new podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network that we are launching this week. It's called TV concierge. It's only available on Spotify. These are 12 to 15-minute mini podcasts that review the latest TV shows streaming on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, Showtime, FX, Apple TV, wherever else. We'll preview new shows that are launching. We'll break down the biggest shows that just launched. We'll review the biggest binge-watch seasons that drop as they happen.

It's our new TV concierge podcast from the Ringer podcast network. Think of it like a little bit of a playlist. Pick and choose the ones you want to listen to. It's available only on Spotify. Hello and welcome to The Ringer NBA show. I am Justin Verrier here to break down night three of the Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls last dance documentary on ESPN. With me, as he was last week, he is wearing the first shoes he wore when he first started

podcasting. It's Rob Mahoney. What's up, buddy? Justin, I'm sick of you going one-on-one in these pods. I'm going to jump in here. We're going to play some team basketball for once. That little ringer boy, you know, is at it again. I was trying to go one-on-one.

Also with us is Bobby Wagner. What's that, Bobby? I'm not addicted to podcasting, Justin. I'm just addicted to competition, baby. Yes, we will definitely get into that and much, much more. We are here to break down episodes five and six. We're already at the halfway point of the series or past the halfway point at this point.

I think the place to start here before we get into categories for each episode and perhaps some of the other salient stuff from these two is to start with Kobe. I thought that was the thing that jumped off and it was the first part of the first episode on the Sunday night. Rob, just for you, general thoughts from that first footage, seeing Jordan talking about Kobe in the locker room and then seeing them on the court together at that All-Star game in 1998. I mean, it was a great way to stage these particular episodes because you have Jordan critiquing. He can, you know, a young Kobe as a player who does like to isolate, who wants to take the game into his own hands, who reduces everything to this one-on-one battle. And then over the course these two episodes, we see Jordan wanting to show up Clyde Drexler, wanting to prove a point against Magic Johnson, wanting to lock up, lock down Tony Koo coach

and wanting to embarrass Dan Marley. It's just like nonstop of the exact kinds of battles that he's critiquing and Kobe Bryant for. And then it makes sense because, you know, really that's where the foundation of their relationship came from was all the similarities between them. I wouldn't have expected necessarily Michael Jordan to be the kind of person who would get along with someone like him. I would think that they would just kind of grade against each other. But for whatever reason, he and Kobe just kind of got each other. Yeah, when he was talking about Kobe in the locker room, I believe he was talking to Tim Hardaway and then other people kind of chime in there. One of my favorite moments is where you could see Sean Kemp. First of all, in a Cavs jersey.

I didn't remember Sean Kemp started in an All-Star game in a Cavs jersey. He was like barely listening, but you could see him like smirk a little bit. It was like a, hmm. I'm just like, all right. kind of crystallized what I imagine Sean Kemp to be like behind closed doors. So I thought that was great. But I couldn't really tell if he was complimenting Kobe at first or he was deriding him because he was like, he's going to want to go one on one. He's going to want to go one on one. I'm like, that's literally what you used to do all the time until Phil Jackson brought the triangle and you still isolated a ton. But you could definitely see the similarities there. And I thought the interview they got with Kobe in current time or whatever,

was, 2019, 18, whenever they sat down with them. I thought that was really interesting as well, because Kobe was pretty unguarded. He was pretty much like, yeah, I was this like, I was this little kid just like trying to find my way into the league. And he basically admitted how he sought out Jordan's advice and how much like he learned from Mike. And it really kind of continued this, this like kind of thing you saw from Kobe post-retirement where he was a little bit more introspect, a little less, uh, turst and a little bit more. A little bit more. open about those comparisons between him and Michael? Well, I think it was both praise and critique.

In the same way that, you know, later in these episodes, we hear Jordan's reaction to Tony Koo coach, kind of having a terrible game against Team Jose and the second game kind of showing up. It's, you know, critiquing the way Kobe is going about his business, but praising and respecting the fact that he is up for those kinds of challenges, that he is willing to put himself out there in that way. I don't know. I just thought it was really interesting.

that was probably the best archival footage I've seen thus far from this documentary and it almost kind of it jived thematically in some ways to what they were getting at in that episode and in the 10 episode arc overall that it seems to be kind of painting but it really seemed like it was so good

they had to go with it and they had to go with it straight off the top I think it's particularly interesting in contrast to what Ken Burns was saying about this documentary early this week So we've reached the point in our news cycle where Ken Burns is doing interviews one and two, we're asking him about the hot button topics. It's almost like how we used to ask old players about current day players just because we knew

they were going to say some shit. So Burns' critique, which I think is a good one to a certain extent, was basically, yeah, Jordan is involved in this documentary. And you can't really do a true documentary if the subject is really at the controls here. He might have Final Cut, whatever. But I think this is the contrast to that sort of statement because having Jordan involved means he signs off on this stuff. And thus we get to see Kobe talking to Jordan. You get to see Jordan in the locker room.

And like it extends beyond that moment, the Kobe one, where we see him like smoking a cigar on a couch before what seemed to be a game. I think those moments to me are most important because a lot of this stuff, if you're of a certain age, you know a lot of the beats of the Michael Jordan stories. but these are the kind of the color that we're starting to see behind closed doors that I think really is making this doc special. Yeah. And while there is a fair bit of polishing and PR being done in terms of certain aspects of Jordan's story, I think they do show at least some restraint in the sense that, you know, they talk about the Jordan rules, for example, and all of the kind of fire that came out of that book in terms of the media maelstrom, the reactions from players, trying to pinpoint who the leaks were. But Michael Jordan says, you know, oh, I get this, what you need to sell book. is you need information that people don't have

or things that are controversial. What he doesn't say is that anything in the book was false. He doesn't see it. You know, it's never, oh, these things didn't happen. It was, oh, Horace Grant said it. Right. I love how casually he throws Horace under the bus. He's like, yeah, it was Horace.

I don't know what we're even talking about here. Yeah, I wonder if this happened today, because as we'd like to do on this podcast, wonder how NBA Twitter would react. Would he just say that he got hacked? Is there any way to say that, like, the information just came from just like an uncredible source here? It's one of those things.

I feel like that, I mean, I guess we'll see with Ethan Sherwood-Strauss's book on the Warriors. We'll see it, you know, as we get some news cycles on some of these subjects with, you know, we get fewer tell-all books these days, but it seems like it's more the, you know, investigative articles. It's more, you know, short-form stuff. But, yeah, certainly, you know, anonymous sourcing, whether it's, you know, the hack allegations. I mean, there are a lot of classic go-toes that players have developed, maybe in part because Jordan helped pioneer them.

Who knows? Yeah, I think it's a really good point because you really don't see that that often. I think the closest thing we probably have seen in recent years is the Winhorerson, David Miniman. I think it was the king, right? Return of the king. Return of the king. And they had some nuggets, but it really was just kind of teasing out some of the details. We probably already knew about the LeBron's story about him going back to the

the Cavaliers, et cetera, and winning the title. Whereas the Jordan rules really just, like, completely opened the door to another side of Michael Jordan that we hadn't previously seen to the point where I read it, like, just a few years ago for the first time. And it still reads pretty salaciously and, like, really entertaining. So I would, if you haven't read that, I'd definitely recommend it.

But I think it's also important because as the doc kind of really goes to great lengths to really show you, Jordan's image was completely polished, which is completely different than you're used to seeing from someone like LeBron who has taken efforts to be a little bit more involved in social justice issues. And he's much more available via social media or just like in general. We see him probably way more often than the public probably ever saw Jordan back in those days. I thought that was, if we're going

down the list of things that were most interesting, the highlights from these docs, I thought that was probably the other big thing here where just some of the ways that they laid out, Jordan's handling of fame and in particular how it led to perhaps his retiring the first time and maybe even as we'll see later his retiring second time I thought that was really interesting. What about that

kind of stood out for you? Yeah, I mean, maybe, you know, I listened to our most, the most recent episode of Music Exists, the podcast on Spotify, that Chris Ryan and Triclostrum and do and they were talking this week about the Beatles and the Rolling Stone. So maybe I just had Beatles on the mind, but all the shots of the crowds waiting

for Jordan, all the reactions from fans, the constant autographs. I mean, they do a really good job of showing just how warying that process could be on a person. And it's really such a human idea that, you know, we would want to connect with something so much, whether it's a musician or an athlete or whoever, so much that you really kind of tear them apart, that you might ultimately be in, you know, the volume of all of fandom, be something that drives a player like Michael Jordan out of the sport, the constant demands of something like that. I think they do a pretty good job of illustrating the toll that that can take on a person. And the idea that, you know, Michael Jordan living his life in 1998,

functionally, is him smoking a cigar by himself in his hotel room because it's the only solace he's going to get. Yeah, they've done a really good job teasing out that aspect of Jordan. And again, to go back to the point about Burns and how we wouldn't perhaps be able to get this anywhere else if Jordan wasn't involved, like, I don't know if people were even seeing this side of Jordan at that point. Because I just don't know where. would come from. And you definitely start to see what led to his frustrations in general and then perhaps what drove him out of the game both twice. And for me, that was the biggest question about Jordan's career. Maybe it's just like, I'm of a certain age. And so I only like, I know of Jordan.

I definitely watch games at that time, but it wasn't probably like conscious enough to really understand some of the particulars or some of the nuance of it all. But they really have done a great job of like pretty much laying out the case where I know that. are conspiracy theories about why Jordan hung it up. But I can also see why it was just a lot to deal with. And they also get into the political side of things. So Jordan memorably kind of stayed out of any sort of political race. They talk about one, I believe it was governor race in which people kind of expected Jordan to support Harvey Gant, a black candidate in the South. It was running against someone who was a little bit more of a questionable Southern type back then. I guess is how

we'll put it for now. But so the quote was Republicans buy sneakers too, which is unfortunately probably one of the most memorable lines from Michael Jordan or one of the ones that perhaps he would like to distance himself from. I didn't realize this at the time, but I guess he had never owned up to that. Is that right, Rob? I mean, that's my awareness of the situation.

It's one of those quotes that you'll see on Wikipedia pages. You'll see reference secondhand in articles. and people had a hard time tracing back exactly what the origin of it was and to see him address it specifically and say, I did say that, but it was as a joke to, you know, Horace Gray and my teammates at the back of the bus,

I think that in itself is kind of a revelation. And again, it's probably one of the most famous things that Jordan has ever said and something that, you know, I think whether it was true or not we had kind of latched onto because it is so revealing of this idea of his character, of this guy who is so buttoned up

that he doesn't want to touch anything political. whatsoever. Even as you mentioned, you know, pretty much like the most slam dunk political endorsement you could ever make against, you know, anti-racist congressperson running in North Carolina, I feel like nationally speaking would have done him a lot of good, but apparently he wanted to stay away from that one. Yeah. So I thought it was really interesting that Barack Obama even commented on it. And even though he kind of couched it and was trying to be sympathetic to where Jordan was at that point in his career and just like, as a human, trying to figure these things out on the fly. It did seem like he was pretty disappointed.

He didn't say it in those terms, but he clearly was expecting him to probably come out in support of Gant. I thought that was interesting, and I wonder if that's going to make the rounds on Twitter afterward. I don't know, but I came away from this almost understanding Jordan's side of things, because on the one hand, while you kind of expect someone of his stature to get involved in these certain things, like things, and we definitely expect that now, especially now that LeBron has made an effort to get involved and things like just all the time, I kind of understood Jordan's side of it where he really was pretty single-minded. He was really focused on basketball. I think he described it as that's where his energy was. And it kind of just fed into this idea that we like wanted, we needed more from him than

perhaps he was willing to give. And I think that just like, again, And it just informs, like, that side of him and just, like, how much the other aspects of basketball, perhaps, like, were the only things that, like, really could defeat him. Well, all these ideas are in, you know, conversation with one another. You know, we can't talk about him being so famous that he's almost untouchable and also, you know, treat this as if it's a separate thing. I mean, this is a guy who wears a shoe. And as they mentioned in the dock, turns sneakers into this cultural artifact, you know, just by the nature of doing any, the smallest thing transforms the idea of that thing. And so him making a political endorsement, him making a political statement, that's different than literally any other cultural figure in the world doing that. And so, you know, in watching this, you know, in his, you know, replaying his career and all these different steps, I find myself doing a lot of counterfactual type thinking.

You know, if Jordan were as good of a player, but slightly less of a star, you know, if he were just a Kevin Durant level star, you know, a really famous athlete, would he have played in the NBA longer? Would it have been less taxing on him? would his whole career would have been, you know, would have been different? How would we think about all these different aspects of his cultural personality? And then in this political way, if Jordan had been slightly different in terms of the political realm, a little bit more outspoken, because so much of the model of what an athlete is comes back to him. Even more so than, you know, Muhammad Ali's mentioned a lot in this episode, even more so than guys like Ali, it comes back to Jordan, this kind of buttoned up professionalism, you know, minding your business, putting in the work.

That's kind of what athletes have been expected to do ever since. he came into the public light. And so how would that have changed the Colin Kaepernick discussion? How would that have changed, you know, Steve Nash being outspoken about the Iraq war in 2003? There's all these, you know, little flare-ups to different degrees in which athletes step outside the stick-to-sports kind of mantra. And how much of that draws back to Jordan doing that exact thing? Right. Yeah. Jordan is the standard bearer. And we kind of compare everything to him, both on the core and obviously off the core. And like perhaps LeBron doesn't seem like such a kind of, contrast if Jordan had done things slightly different, right?

It is interesting, though, because the only thing I can really think of that even come close to the Republicans by sneakers too, for Jordan was when he made those kind of really weird comments about China earlier in this season. And obviously, nowhere near what Jordan is saying here, pretty much distancing himself from a political race in order to really just like focus on selling shoes. But I thought that was the only time where LeBron seemed to favor. I don't know, his brand or whatever you would like to call it over that. He did catch some flack for that. And I do wonder if in the current environment, what we would say about Jordan now? I imagine it's also kind of an unfair question

just because the political debate is so charged. But I don't know. I think it's really interesting to think about all of these things in the modern context and how things would be different and how people would be different as a result of some of the things going on. Well, especially if you take Jordan out of his timeline, our whole existence in sports is different. The way we talk about it, the way we debate these things. It's hard to even conceptualize what life would be like if he hadn't been there to be here now,

you know, in kind of a time machine sense. And then the other thing that kind of feeds into this whole discussion is the Atlantic City debacle, which I think is pretty tame in comparison to the point about like how things would be different nowadays as opposed to back then. One report, I believe they show like a newspaper clipping and it said he got back at 2.30 in the morning or didn't go to sleep until 2.30 in the morning. It was his contention that he got back around 12-1.

I think either is probably fine. Like I probably would like not be able to like write a blog post the next day because I go to bed at like 10 or 11. But it just seems like, A, Michael Jordan, who is going like on the golf course and playing like perhaps two rounds at times while smoking cigars right before a playoff game that decides the fit of the NBA.

Like, staying up and gambling a little bit past midnight is totally fine. These conversations play up very differently in 2020 versus 2005. I think there was a time in the post-Jordan era where things were still kind of holier than thou in a lot of ways. You know, like take Vince Carter flying back for his college graduation, for example, and the reaction to that, this is kind of that idea on steroids.

He's not flying back for his college graduation to do this thing. He promised his parents he would do or the people growing up he would do. He's going to Atlantic City with his dad and some friends. I really like how they framed it too as, oh, my dad suggested we go to Atlantic City, the kind of like unimpeachable bulletproof reason to go. Look, it's okay if you want to go to Atlantic City in between games. We're not here to like mind your curfew, Michael Jordan. And I think that that's one area where you can really understand.

and the frustration of being him at that point in time. Because, I mean, for one, it's very clear that Jordan just does not like answering for things. You know, he talks a lot about people taking shots at him when ultimately, I think, in the grand scheme of athletes had it pretty easy, you know, in terms of the scrutiny that other athletes have been, you know, saddled with and subject to, like, Jordan did get a lot of attention. There are books and articles written about him. There's a lot of stuff written about who he was as a player and as a teammate that's not always positive.

But I don't feel like he was, you know, dragged through the mud necessarily in the way that some other people have been. And so he didn't like answering for anything. And that he has this issue, which, again, like, although I can hear both sides of my brain kind of arguing about it in terms of the very, like, teetotaler, like, you should really buckle down and do your work part of it versus he's a grown man, let him do what he wants so long as he shows up and does what he's supposed to do, I can hear that conflict in my brain. And yet, just let the man live, I think.

Right. So that's the other side of the Burns' criticism, right? So yes, on the good part of allowing Jordan into this process and having his fingers in the executive production branch of the documentary, you get to see things you normally wouldn't, which I think, honestly, if we're being honest about media these days is kind of how things work these days. But the flip side of that is perhaps things stray a bit more toward PR. Do you feel like that appears at times in these two episodes specifically? one thing it has to and it's one of those things that you have to keep in mind as much for what you see as what you don't. It's what part of the interview got cut. Who do they talk to that they weren't able to use because Michael either said or insinuated that maybe you shouldn't be using that or shouldn't talk to that person or whatever it was. We don't know the exact creative arrangement. But with, you know, documentary, I think it's very easy to look at it and say, this is fact. These are people recounting events and talking about their perspectives and it is as it is. But there's all kinds of creative choices that go into this from a storytelling perspective. and Michael Jordan is one of the primary storytellers here. Yeah, I mean, Jerry Krause being villainized pretty much every episode, as I think perhaps really feeds into that.

I mean, it does seem like Krause was kind of a jerk in some aspects. The quote, after they win a title, I believe it was the 92 one, where he's like talking up the organization and Jerry Reinsdorf over like any specific member of the team probably feeds into that. But it does, he's almost like the big bad at the end of each episode. He's like the Gus Fring of this entire thing. And I'm just like, he probably wasn't that bad. In fact, like it seemed like he took a ton of abuse from Jordan and everybody else because

they always had jokes. And I think, as we'll probably see later on, they got pretty vicious at certain points of that run there, in particular the last three titles. But I don't know. Like, perhaps I'm just numb to this because the PR aspect is such a big part of what we do on a day-to-day basis covering the league at large and just like a general strong. interview is going to have a lot of this. I mean, at this point, like, if you want to talk to a lot of athletes one-on-one, you have to, like, mention, like, herbal life or something, you know,

within the article. So, so I don't know. But on the other hand, I guess what could have the, the documentarians done in order to really get Jordan to perhaps go elsewhere? Like, if he doesn't want to answer something, he's not going to answer him one way or another. I think that would be my defense of the flip side of this. Yeah, for this one specifically, I'm like, yes, I feel like Jordan is spinning it how he wants to, but he was the only person that was there. Like, unless you're talking to someone who he was gambling against that night in Atlantic City, like, what are they going to tell you that he was like 10 Hennessees deep?

Like, it doesn't really matter. And also, they're playing the playoff game the next night at 8 p.m. So, like, 2.30 a.m. late-ish, but still like 16 hours away from game time. Load management. It's a big part of today's NBA. He needs to get those naps in. That was one more counterfactual I kept going through was what if the Bulls lose that series?

What if they lose against the Knicks? And this becomes not just a blip on this huge Michael Jordan story. That becomes the Michael Jordan story. Then it's like Odell Beckham party boat level. Oh, boy. Except more because it's like not just a first round wild card playoff game. It's like the greatest basketball player of all time. Charles Smith could show his face again is probably what would happen.

former Yukon legend just breaks my heart every time. I have to say, I've seen that play a bunch of times, but that is wild. That pretty much the entire series, and if you really want to extrapolate, perhaps some really important moments

in Michael Jordan's life come down to being able to block one guy three times and strip him in like four successive plays. Because I do think if they lose that series, he probably comes back. I mean, I have no idea. I think it just opens up,

it changes the whole idea of like what he thinks of himself, that whole dynamic there. I have a really hard time parsing it other than to say, I don't think anyone's looking at Michael Jordan the same way if he blows a playoff series by going to Atlantic City. Right. Or even appears to blow a playoff series by going to Atlantic City. Right.

Bobby, anything else from your point of view that stood out from episodes five and six? While we're on the point about gambling, I mean, it was interesting that Michael basically like gave the same exact line in 2019 doing the interviews that he was giving to the press back then. It's like he either saw the footage or just remembered what he said

and just stuck with that story, which was, I thought, funny, but like with retrospect, like a little winking. Mm-hmm. Like, yeah, obviously, I was out gambling, but why do you guys, why are you guys so hung up on this? I'm a basketball player.

I'm not the president, and I'm a basketball player, and I went out and played basketball very effectively, probably better than you guys are ever going to do your own jobs, you know? So you're saying that Michael Jordan was a little bit rehearsed? Talk about paving the way for today's current NBA players being rehearsed. It's just good coaching right there. All right, so let's move on to the categories here for episode five specifically.

The goosebumps moment for me was the Kobe and Jordan footage. Can we all agree that that was the big one? Anything else? More specifically than just the Kobe and Jordan footage. I mean, obviously, we've all seen that All-Star game footage and heard the behind the scenes a bunch of times from like the NBA Twitter account. But pushing behind the curtain and then also pairing it with the sit down interviews with Jordan and Kobe in current time. Like the imitation is the sincerest form of flattery point goes even beyond just the way that Kobe played basketball. He even delivers lines the same way that Jordan does.

Like even in their post-playing career. Like that wasn't how Mike talked when he was giving interviews in the night. 90s, but it is how he talks and how he ends in his certain cadence that he has now. And Kobe adopted that after the fact. And I just found it so interesting, whether it's subconscious or conscious, like, even in their post-playing careers, Kobe is still modeling himself after Jordan in that way. Yeah, I mean, just seeing Kobe talking in what would have been probably last year was definitely sent chills.

I mean, we're only like, what, two months removed from his death. And it was just weird seeing him. I also love seeing clips of him when he is so young because, and he makes this point there where the league was particularly old. And he was like 19 years old, like playing against, like, guys who were like 30. Like, the prime was like probably Jordan at that point.

And I love watching young Kobe because he has this like really endearing mix of like, I know I'm the shit, but I don't know what to do with my hands. And like that moment in particular, it really set out to the point where he was saying goodbye to Jordan after they finished that All-Star game

and he was like, cool, and he said it in a way where he like just didn't know what to say and he gave him a pat him in the back and I'm like, this is great.

I love that moment. It's like a golden retriever puppy with swagger basically. Exactly. Jordan cooked him in that game though. Some of those fadeaways over top of them it's just like,

it's like passing the torch, it's two on the nose. Also, how do you, just like ask him tips on your game in the midst of an all-star game. Like, they clearly didn't have much of relationship to the point where like Jordan clearly knew about him. And if we're being honest, it did seem like he was a little bit threatened about like this new kid coming up. But like, who like asked someone like, how do you get off your jumper, like right before

you just like go and pull up for a three in the midst of an all-star game? It's like, it's crazy. And then he answered it. And he, it seemed like that's what sparked the relationship to the point were like at the at cobi's funeral or memorial service jordan was pretty upfront about like how close they were together which i don't think we ever knew until that moment and then we get that reinforced with the cobi interviewer is basically like yeah we talked a bunch and i'm like holy shit like i guess they did well just i didn't want to do this in the middle of this podcast but could you tell me a bit about your footwork like just take me through your craft here teach them those a1 segues dustin i think you might have to go to someone else there i'm more of like the uh the uh the debt left

tremph of transitions there. Speaking of which, the other goosebumps moment that I had was honestly Jerry Seinfeld in the locker room. That was one of my favorite moments. One, because, like, I guess, like, I also haven't seen much of Jerry Seinfeld from that era off of, like, TV and, like, just scripted his show. But I thought it was interesting that, like, he definitely behaved exactly like his character on Seinfeld. And the most of the most of the most of the moment. And the most of the most of the moment. moment where he says hello to Phil Jackson in the locker room as if he knows him was like laugh out loud funny. It was a, hey Phil. I love that part. And I also love the conversation that he had with Jordan because getting back to the point we said we were talking about with Jordan being

so rehearsed and like almost programmatic, it was funny how Jordan when he was trying to be casual would like hang up on lines. Did you guys hear this when he's like, I haven't, I haven't seen you since the photo shoot, but he's actually like, I haven't seen you since the photo shoot. And like, he kind of stumbles over the line. And I'm like, holy shit, Michael Jordan. I don't know if he's like, unless he knows what he's saying, I think he's a little bit awkward. Did you guys pick up on that? Well, I did love how he didn't even want to confess or pretend that he watched Seinfeld. They're just like, oh, these other two guys, they watch a lot of your show. You know, just grabbing on by association. But, no, I mean, Michael, one thing that's really interesting about all this archival footage,

or it's not really archival, but the footage that's been vaulted that they recorded specifically for this doc is a lot of Jordan hanging out with teammates or hanging out with other people, and he's talking shit about Kobe, about, you know, they're drinking beers after the game.

You know, he's talking about his teammates' nightlife. Like, he's saying stuff and doing stuff, and the other teammates are like looking straight down the barrel of the lens, like Jim Halpert or something. They're like, they do not want to be caught saying the thing on the Michael Jordan documentary, even in 1998. but I mean, give it up to Michael. Like he put himself out there even for this one,

even if he was a little awkward sometimes. He even had that moment where he was shooting a commercial and he was trying to give this like really poignant statement where it's really dark and he's like, you don't want to be Michael Jordan. And he keeps flubbing the line. Like I don't know if they were just feeding him different lines like he was on Parks and Rec or something,

but I think he just didn't remember the line, which is like, holy shit, that's me trying to do an ad read on a podcast. I thought, in his defense, I thought they were trying out some different looks. But yeah, not all those were winners. I'm sure they had to leave a couple of them on the cutting room floor. Right. So, all right, on that note, so obviously the story about Jordan going to Nike, I think,

has been told a bunch. I didn't really glean much from that. But I actually didn't know that he liked Adidas coming out of college. Did you guys know that? I mean, you know, I think we had been, it had been suggested and, you know, bounced around, you know, this idea of him kind of choosing between this lot and obviously Converse being the established power. I didn't know that Adidas is where he wanted to go

and it just wasn't feasible at that time. I refuse to believe that there was ever a world before Nike was the coolest shoe company. Well, for you, there might not have been. There wasn't. I also thought like the magic shrug story would have been great, but I think that was told earlier this year,

I feel like. I don't remember knowing that until it at the very least made the rounds again earlier this year, two years ago, or something like that. There were a lot of those moments in this episode's, specifically, like the dream team stuff we had all known about because that went through a documentary

phase a couple years ago. And so, like, it was nice to see Tony Kooch's side of things. Always, like, humanized that. And if only to, like, get him involved in the doc, because I don't think he's at an on-camera interview in the current day up until this point. But, I mean, something was just the scale. You know, like, they talk about how, you know, we know that the Air Jordan, the first shoe was massively popular, you know, massively, constantly. controversial. I don't think I quite knew that they sold $126 million worth of shoes, at least, you know, allegedly according to, you know, the figure they expressed in this doc. So some things like that jump out. And also, let's give it up for Rod Thorne, who's just like completely

incredulous at the idea of marketing Michael Jordan like a tennis player and just like could not wrap his brain around that idea. But apparently there's some logic to it. I also don't really know the distinction because as we see earlier on, there was a converse commercial involving a lot of like the big players of that time, bird, magic, Bernard King. So clearly they were marketing individual talents. So I don't really understand the difference between that and a tennis player. Is it just that like he had his own shoe maybe? I guess. I mean, but there were Jordan, or sorry, they were bird and magic color ways of that shoe. You know, like there were team colors in the conference weapon. So, you know, I guess it's a different, you know, specific model and make for Jordan.

but I mean, what's really the difference there? I don't know. Right. And then Justin Timberlake had one of my favorite unnecessary moments of the doc thus far where he's basically like, yeah, I really like shoes. I had to cut grass in order to get them because I really liked them. It was like, cool, Justin Timberlake. The unnecessary... That's part owner of the Memphis Grizzlies Justin Timberlake to you, very year. Right, right. They needed to balance the political story with someone else's southern perspective, right? That's just getting word from the NBA community, bro. They also had Nause talking about like how the shoes were like a lightsaber.

So I didn't get it at first. And I was like, what the fuck is he talking about? And then I rewound it. I was like, oh, this is actually really salient and like probably the best quote of the documentary that's far. Well, also let's give it up for whatever archival broadcaster was saying that Michael Jordan was as hot as a cabbage patch doll right now. That one I thought really jumped out. Cabbage Patch kids were fire, man. I don't know what you're talking about.

I'm not debating it. I'm just giving credit words, Stu. So to stick with the shoes, Bobby, you also flagged something for our, what would NBA Twitter say? Oh, yeah, I don't know if this is necessarily like the pulse of NBA Twitter, so to speak. But I think that, yeah, there would be like seven different, you know, complex shoes, complex kicks, Bleacher Report Air Jordan brand. And it would be like, which shoes did Jordan warm up in? And which did he play the first half in?

And which shoes did he switch to in the second half? And I just feel like $126 million would be light work for him now. With all of the marketing that Twitter is giving him for free, you know? Yeah. Shoe like Twitter and Instagram are my favorite things to lurk on because I'm not like an active participant, but I very much like like to keep tabs on things. And one of my favorite thing is to find out like which bullshit thing from Michael Jordan's past they use in order to come up with a colorway.

Like I remember he wore a jacket once. And they were like, this is the Michael Jordan wore a jacket. color way and I was like, what the fuck we're doing? I look forward after this doc to get some Jordan ones with an insult that's like bloody on the inside in commemoration of his 1998 game rewearing those shoes again.

See, I wouldn't doubt that we get those like the bloody sold Jordans and they're just red instead of black or something like that, that's going to happen. We're getting dangerously close to Kurt Schilling territory and I need to stop this conversation before we get there. All right, and then the Jordan quoted the episode. A lot of the best quotes are coming

more from Jordan in the past. and they are these days, unlike last week's set of episodes. The best one, which I think is kind of inarguable here, talking about Kobe in the locker room. They're talking about Kobe airballing those shots in the playoff game intensely. After the first four attempts, Jordan asked incredulously, if I was his teammate, I wouldn't pass him the fucking ball. You want this ball, brother? You better rebound.

Which is classic Jordan. There's one thing I want to talk about here in this first episode, too, which is, you know, they do a nice little montage of all the celebrities that were showing up for Jordan games, all the, you know, a little bit of FaceTime for some famous people. And Danny DeVito shows up wearing an out-of-sight hat. I was like, I don't remember Danny DeVito and out-of-sight until I realized he was a producer on the movie. And I think this might be our first instance of like sideline celebrity but product plug that we see going on now, where it's not just, oh, look at the celebrity's courts out of the Lakers game.

It's, oh, tune in for their new show on T&N. T on Thursday nights. Yeah, we also got a glimpse at a moment when John Cusack was apparently a celebrity who could like chop it up with players on the court. And I also thought it was really great that he was part of a long legacy of goofy white celebrities who only interact with the goofy white NBA player. And so Bill Wendington's like, yeah, you pass more than Michael does. And I was like, get the fuck out of here.

First of all, how dare you for challenging John Cusack's celebrity? We're going to leave that there. He deserves the sideline seat. He deserves his NBA interactions, goofy as they may be. This isn't a Jordan quote necessarily, but when he's cooking the Knicks and he turned an MSG in his final game there in the regular season, he turns to Spike and he says,

you can't guard me? It's like no shit movie director Spike Lee cannot guard you, greatest NBA player of all time. Yeah, Spike was almost like a wrestling announcer where he wasn't involved in the game, but he was involved in the game. You know what I mean? And so it did seem like whatever, like,

uh, strife was involved between two teams. It was often between Spike and that, like best player, Reggie Miller being the prime example of that. But it was weird, right? He's like, come out on the court and it's like, obviously no,

he's not going to do that. He's a director who just like made an Academy Award winning movie. Next time someone has, is killing you for a trash take on this podcast, Javy. I should be like, you can't come on this podcast and hang with me. I probably have said that. So let's, uh,

it's a little too close to the bone. there. 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 this point. So let's say you're searching for the Bill Simmons podcast. If you watch, both of Dave Chang Show or binge mode or the ring or 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. It's 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. 0.5 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 two times. And if you're completely insane, you can do three 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 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. So what about the sixth episode, our second of the night here? For the goosebumps moment, did anything stand out for you guys? It wasn't really a goosebumpsy episode. I mean, it was a lot of like, amending the record. Let me repeat my piece. our line. Let's talk a little bit about the gambling stuff and keep it moving.

The only thing close to a goosebumps moment for me was when we saw archival footage of Mike Francesca. Just really laying... Francesa? Francesca? Yeah. Francesca? What I say? All right, whatever. You know, I'm really a wordsmith. I don't really speak out loud that much, so give me some slack. No, but I thought it was great when he was just laying into Jordan because of the gambling stuff, which is like classic. That would happen then. for talking head MVP, I have David Aldridge. He had a pretty good moment.

He had several good moments in this episode. But in particular, I was caught by what he was saying about Jordan, kind of bouncing back from all the gambling stuff, and he comes back, stops talking in the media. He pretty much wins the series against the Knicks and then takes it to the Suns right after that. And he's basically like Jordan would say that he would show you in the specific quotas.

And he said, I'll show you, and he did. Not great when I deliver it, but he had great just like delivery from it. So we'll go with David here. No, DA was great. I think he's the really necessary counterpoint on all the gambling stuff. Really, you know, here's the setting. Here's the context. This is why the media may have reacted the way they did.

This is why this could have been foreseen as a problem. Really framing that in an eloquent way, as David Aldridge always does. I also like Will Purdue's story about Jordan crashing the dollar blackjack games at the front of the plane just to get some action. And really, you know, that's the strength of a lot of this stuff is they either have great footage that we haven't seen that just shows some of these interactions like Jordan gambling with security guards on who can throw a coin closest to the wall. Or you get these stories from teammates who, you know, are just a little bit more frank than usual, I feel about at least some of Jordan's more, you know, hyper-competitive bordering on asshole tendencies. Here are just more on the, you know, the benign competitive side. Yeah, a lot of gambling stories.

But he doesn't have a gambling problem. He has a competition problem because those things are very different. So for what would NBA Twitter say, I already made my load management joke. So unless anyone else has anything, we can move on. I think there would be a big well,

actually, on Jordan choosing to gamble instead of going to visit the White House as his like covert act of political protests. You know, he learned some lessons from earlier in his career. This is where he chose to really make his statement and just, you know,

we weren't smart enough to pick up on it at the time. HW, not my president, bro. It's a great point, and it also speaks to Michael Jordan's character because he didn't have any interest in politics at all. He just really wanted to gamble

with this shady character who would eventually write a book about his gambling. I think there would be at least a couple members of NBA Twitter who would be like, similar to Andre Agadala for finals MVP would be like,

what if Horace Grant and Scotty Pippen actually were the MVPs of the series for making it hard on Berkeley? I mean, Not to go that far, but Horace Grant, and I think this is where I really am a little bit sympathetic to him. If he was, hypothetically, the leak behind the Jordan rules, I'm a little sympathetic to his perspective and his spot on that team, because he's definitely the best player on these Bulls who just gets absolutely zero credit.

You know, it's Pippen, and Rodman even gets so much more shine than him just because he's a bigger personality. Horse Grant was fucking good and really essential to those teams. And yet here, other than, you know, a throwaway line talking about the pistons here, is just kind of, of an asterisk or, you know, a side note in this larger story. Do you think that was because of the goggles? I honestly think that we discredit his play because of the gogs. Third greatest player of all time, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was wearing goggles before that. So I don't think so.

Yeah, but he's like big, you know, and he stands out. Corrus Grant was the third guy on a two-star team. Like, we already were going to overlook him in the same way we overlook Bosch. But having the gogs on, you're like, yeah, so what, he has 20 points. Yeah. Interesting point. If Boss was wearing goggles, what would the 2010s be like? I think they just needed to market the goggles better.

You know, they really need to make that a part of this, like an Anthony Davis unibrow situation. Like, we really just need to go after it. Oakley dropped the ball, bro. Horace Grant needs a better brand. See, that's the take. Yep. We found it.

But yeah, I agree. I think we definitely would see some Horace Grant appreciation because he also went on to be a key part of those magic teams. And can we all agree that he was probably? the biggest source of the leak. Like, he went out of his way to basically try to discredit that, like, viewpoint. But it was pretty clear

because he admitted practically that, like, he and St. Smith are, like, really close. How are you close with someone and yet not telling them things about the team? You guys are both a more hardcore journalist than I am here, just as a pod producer. But if I'm not mistaken, when someone is just giving you everything,

you also have to verify that with another person. So there at least had to be more than one leak going on here, right? Sam Smith is not going to write an entire book based off just Horace Grant's side of the story. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you read the Jordan rules, there are stuff that like George, like, Horace Grant could not have been in that room. He could not have heard, you know, he's not putting words in Phil Jackson's mouth about Jerry Krauss or whatever. A lot of these are coming from other places, including, you know, whether Phil himself, whether other coaches, other members of the staff, lots of other players, I'm sure. And I mean, speaking of other things we learned in this

documentary, I learned that a lot of people, including Phil Jackson, think that. that the name of the book is Jordan Rules instead of the Jordan Rules. That's true. I don't know if they needed to distinguish between the Jordan Rules, which is what they call the rules against him in those Piston series. And so they really emphasize the rules there. But yeah, what was going on there? To the point where we got Andrea Kramer being like that, too, and I'm like, you should probably know this as a journalist. Maybe so. But either way, I think Argy Horace was probably involved in some way in that book. But got did a little bit dirty by Michael in terms of being like the sole, you know, he's not the co-author of the thing.

Yeah, listen, I think there was probably a lot of material to work with here. I mean, one of the things they reference is Jordan punching Will Purdue. And so, like, there was probably 20 to 30 people who witnessed that happen. And I can't imagine that was like the only cantankerrant moment from Jordan. It's just, it probably just, like, stuck out because of Horace Grant's, like, close relationship with Smith. Having said that, he probably didn't form a lot of it. that was my quote of the episode, by the way. Was Jordan basically outright saying that Horace did it without really any hesitation?

Do you guys have anything? I think that's the one for sure. Bobby? I third that. All right. So that's it for those two episodes. We end each episode by looking forward here. What are you guys looking forward to now in these next two episodes that we're going to see next Sunday?

Well, in Michael's honor, I think, and you know, you can tweet at Justin Vierierier with all your responses on this, but get in your guesses on how many total cigars are going to be smoked over the course of this full run. I mean, we saw Phil lighting some up in this episode. Jordan had basically one in every archival scene in which he's not on a chord. I want a total number of cigars for the last dance. Get your guesses into at Justin Verrier immediately, please. Honestly, that's the most impressive part of Jordan's legacy that I didn't know at the time was that he was a pretty heavy smoker, it seemed like, and yet was just torching guys left and right. Like, how do you do that regularly?

But then after smoking, like, several cigars, being on the golf course, that's insane. That's how Bobby produces podcast, by the way. You should see me right now. It's just puff, puff, puff, dude. The era of just casually throwing down cigars is still very jarring to see. Like, it's one thing, you know, chain smoke and taking your cigarette break outside. But the way that Jordan is just housing these things is maybe the most impressive display of his athleticism. it was interesting when Jordan was talking about how

when he started in 84 and just dudes in the locker and we're drinking beers still. I mean, like we know that objectively because of all the stories about like Larry Bird and the Celtics and whatnot and drinking beers at halftime and Larry kicking beer and having the best season of his career and whatnot. But like it's weird to think about players that spanned the era from when that was a normal thing to do, totally normal thing to do. And when that was like heresy to do. Like like why nobody would ever drink beer at

half time of a playoff? game. Yeah, that's another big takeaway from these docs for me that the 80s and the NBA seemed like a pretty cool time. You know? Just doing cocaine and like drinking buds in a half time, man. This is just like

just a wild scene. This podcast is sponsored by cocaine. No, so for me, the next thing that I'm looking forward to is obviously just Jordan talking about his father's death, which seems to based on the timeline we're following here next up and then his retirement and then baseball.

I've never really heard him talk in depth about his father's death, but you could definitely tell just from the first six episodes how they've been talking about him, how they've been mentioning how he was involved in Jordan signing the Nike contract. And he was with him, as we mentioned earlier, just like going to Atlantic City, like how much he was involved in his life, almost on like a day-to-day basis or at the very least just like as he's going about his career, which I didn't know about beforehand. And so I'm really interested to hear what he says about that and what drove him out of retirement because I think that's the biggest question of the entire doc is like, why the hell did he go play baseball? So I think that's going to be fascinating.

And just based on some of the dribbles we're hearing of information from people who have seen those episodes just online, they've been saying that there's some pretty telling stuff in these. So I'm excited. I have to stay on brand and say that the thing that I'm most excited for is watching Jordan try to pick up the rotation on a curveball or whatever. But like, I'm also just mostly excited for them continuing the crescendo from episodes five and six in pulling back the layers of the onion and showing Jordan as a human being. Just some of those stills and some of the shots of like the way that he was surrounded. I'm thinking of, I don't know if it was episode five or six, but there was a photo that the doc

cut to. And anytime a doc cuts to like just a regular still image, it better be like a really powerful image. And this one was incredibly powerful. It was just like a bird's eye view of all the report. around him with the mic stuffed in his face and you couldn't see any empty space between him or any of the circle of reporters. And so finishing and continuing that crescendo throughout episode seven and eight, I think is going to be just either sobering or revealing or whatever

it turns out to be. But either way, a really interesting watch. I mean, even in spite of some of the spin and the PR and the damage control that's in these episodes, I think episode might be the strongest episode we've seen so far. Like, I thought it was very powerful, very well told, had a lot of good stuff in it all told. So Ken Burns eat your heart out. All right. That's a good place to end it. We will be back probably next week to talk about the next set of episodes. The Ringar Ambiena show will keep going throughout the week with Kevin and Verno. But until then, for Rob and Bobby, I'm Justin. We will see you next time.