WHOOP Podcast - Jason Hehir, director of The Last Dance, discusses his Emmy Award-winning Michael Jordan documentary

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

Jason Hehir directed the Emmy award-winning series The Last Dance, chronicling Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. It was the most-watched documentary in ESPN history and is already regarded by many as one of the best sports docs ever made. He sits down with Will Ahmed to talk about his never-ending quest to find out what makes the greatest athletes on earth human, the obstacles his team had to overcome to finish all 10 episodes on-time, and what it was truly like interviewing Jordan. Jason discusses following his dream (2:22), what it's like interviewing elite athletes (5:17), how The Last Dance became a reality (12:37), working at light speed to get the series finished (16:00), finding the humanity in world-class athletes (21:41), dealing with criticism (23:41), the breakthrough moment interviewing Jordan (30:29), betting with Mike (34:31), the iPad (39:49), the flu game (43:50), Scottie Pippen (50:09), Jerry Krause (52:23), Phil Jackson (56:49), the memorable ending to Episode 7 (1:04:05), and Jordan's unmatched desire to win (1:07:14).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks. Welcome to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, the founder and CEO of WOOP, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. That's right. Woop is a 24-7 membership that measures everything about your body and coaches you to improve. You can get 15% off a W-W-N-M-M-E-D if you use the code Will-A-L-H-M-E-D at checkout. This week's guest is the amazing Jason Hare, the director of the last dance.

He just won an Emmy over the weekend for the amazing documentary he put together on Michael Jordan and the Bulls. Jason is an amazing storyteller, amazing director. We talk about how he got into directing in the first place. Some of the other spectacular sports stocks that he's done include Andre the Giant, the Fab Five, and the 85 Bears. We talk about his never-ending quest to find out what makes the greatest athletes in the world human, how he rose from the lowest levels of the ranks to become one of the top documentary filmmakers on the planet,

how the last dance came to be, and the trials and tribulations he and his team had to overcome to finish the series. This was a documentary, by the way, that got compressed on a timeline that was insane. What it was like to meet MJ and how a fear of failure helped Jason get the most out of his interviews with, Michael Jordan. And then a bunch of amazing anecdotes from Jason's interactions with Jordan and a number of the other people they interviewed. There's a lot here. This is a really fun podcast. I personally loved the last dance. I was a huge Michael Jordan fan. And I think Jason and team did a phenomenal job on this. So without further ado, here is Jason Hare. Jason, thanks for coming on the Woof podcast. My pleasure, man. Thanks for having for

So you are a real inspiration, one, because you've created a bunch of documentaries that I've found incredibly inspiring, namely The Last Dance, but also your career is quite impressive as well, just the way you've risen in the ranks. And I actually want to start there. We're going to spend a lot of time talking about The Last Dance, which I absolutely loved. But for you and your career, did you always know that you were going to be a director? I wanted to either be a movie director or a sportscaster. when I was a kid. So it was either like I wanted to be Bob Costas or Steven Spielberg. So I, and my dream was to, I'm from Boston, so my dream was to come back and be like the local

Boston, like Channel 4, 5 or 7 sportscaster. So I interned at Channel 5, which is the ABC affiliate when I was in college and throughout my whole childhood. I'm the youngest of three boys. So we were playing sports 90% of the time and chasing each other around with, with our, our camcourt for the other 10% of the time. But I was often the guy, being the youngest, I was a guy who had to hold the camera and move all the stuff around and basically do the job of like a PA.

So I kind of learned, I learned that aspect and learned that I love that aspect of storytelling, that method of storytelling. And then I was the ball boy, I played football, baseball, and basketball, and my brothers played everything too, and tennis and golf and street hockey

and anything else we could get our hands on. And then I was the ball boy for the BC, basketball team when I was 10, 11, and 12 because my mom worked at B.C. And I used to just hang out at the gym until they started inviting me to come on, you know, road trips and stuff with them. So I was kind of like the little kid who was always knocking around. And that's when they played in the garden, the old garden. Right. So I used to every other Saturday in the winter when they had the Big East schedule, a portion of their schedule, I would get to go and shoot by myself on the parquet.

And this is in the heyday of the Celtics. I started in 87, so it was a year after Bird's 86 Celtics won the title. So I've always been around sports and athletes, and I've been kind of behind the scenes and gotten to know these athletes as human beings, and that always fascinated me. And then I've always been, you know, obsessed. When I wasn't playing a sport or watching a sport, I was making a movie or watching a movie.

It's funny how much of being successful at your job is being comfortable, around athletes you know like i've i've experienced this now because whoop is worn by a lot of interesting athletes and you have to just be completely normal around them you can't be a fan or anything and and when you do that all of a sudden they they completely open up and you'll you know you'll be talking to athletes about things you never would have imagined in your life yeah i mean there's it's so you know cliched but but they put their pants on one leg at a time yeah totally totally Earlier in my career, I think that a lot of my friends and my family thought that I was just going to games and watching these games. Because I worked a lot in live sports earlier in my career.

I was at NBC for three years and then I was at HBO for seven years before going on on my own. And, you know, I think that they thought this was just kind of a vacation. But the truck aspect of it was very, very grueling and pressure packed. But once I started interviewing athletes and spending time with them, you can't. be starstruck from a professional level because they'll smell that on you immediately and you lose all credibility. But you also can't do your job if you're sitting there thinking, oh my God, I'm interviewing Kobe Bryant. Yeah, it's distracting. Yeah. So I think that the will to do the best possible job overtakes any sort of awe that you would have around these

athletes. I remember one of the only times that I had this kind of out-of-body experience was interviewing Jim Brown. I was probably like 25 or 26. And Jim Brown was my dad's favorite football player and I had read an article in Rolling Stone on the plane on the way down it just happened to it wasn't in research I was just reading for leisure and I said that uh Jim Brown was Elvis Presley's favorite player so I'm sitting in front of this guy I don't think that was one of those heavy moments but very few and far between I think that the the fear of failure honestly is what kicks in and it's like I have to focus I have to get this done that's we'll get the last dance, like you said, but that's really the most crucial interview was June 26,

2018, was the first one with Michael. And any sort of awe that is there when he walks in the room, which, you know, I don't care who you are, the room tilts towards Michael when he walks in the room. You have to overcome that because if that day failed, the entire project would have failed. Totally. Now, am I right in reading this that, you know, out of the gates you were making like 500 bucks a week, you know, as an assistant at NBC, just kind of like the lowest of the ranks, right? 550. I don't want to sell it short, but it was 550 a week.

It was one 10 a day, and we were working oftentimes six or seven days a week, but we were told we could only sign in for five days a week. I will say now that there's a statute of limitations on this. I think I won't get in trouble anymore, but I figure out a way that I could, because 550 a week, you literally can't live on that in, in, in, totally. in New York. I had a friend who was doing a story about food stamps and discovered that she was eligible for food stamps

in the course of doing that story. So I figured out how to sign into two shows at once. There was like a local show I was working on for five days a week and then the national show. And it was such, I mean, those are the heydays of like G.E. NBC back then. So then all of a sudden I was making 1,100 a week. And I honestly thought that I was like Daddy Warbucks. I couldn't be 52,000.

a year. I was like, this is it. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Just 52,000 a year, a thousand a week. I'm good. You know, I've now had the pleasure of getting to meet a lot of people that have started there and, you know, risen to these incredible regs, which is where I would assign you are in your life. And I think there's something powerful about knowing that you've, you've been able to come from that. You know, it gives you a confidence in the work that you're doing today. I imagine it even makes you slightly more comfortable taking risks in the work that you do today knowing that, hey, I've gone through all of this. And if everything hit the fan, I could do it all over again. I think it also helps. You're right in saying those things. But I think it also

helps every level that you get to that's a little bit higher. You can relate to everyone who's working below you because you've done that. Totally. I don't know any PA now, I was a PA starting 22 years ago. And I always tell them that I'm never going to ask you to do anything that I didn't do. So whether that's making copies or going to get lunch or you could be making a decision on a scene, one shot or the other that's going to kind of make that scene. And then in the next minute, you had to go downstairs and let the delivery guy in at 2 in the morning because, you know, or go back to the store because he put roast beef instead of turkey on someone's sandwich or something. So the only time that, the only exception to that, we were shooting with Ronda Rousey one time. and we were at her gym and at the PA, the local PA in LA

who was this really good kid he mistakenly kicked over her spit bucket in the corner of the ring and it's as to the most vial this fluid you could imagine and I said to him remember when I told you that I'll never ask you to do anything that I didn't do and he was like I got to clean that up

and I was like yeah man you have to clean that house that was the only but I do think it gives you you humility. It gives you an appreciation. I mean, I still feel incredibly lucky when I'm on a plane. I still have butterflies that I'm going to make a movie and shoot and meet someone new and help shepherd the telling of their story. Like, it sounds really cheesy, but I honestly feel so lucky to be doing what I'm doing. Well, look, congratulations. And you're really good at it. I mean, what moment did you realize, hey, this is something I'm good at? I don't know if I

from there yet. I mean, I still have a large amount of imposter syndrome. I didn't go to school for this. I was an English major, and I learned at the foot of some really talented people at HBO and at NBC

and just tried to do what they would do when I, you know, I lied my way into a lot of jobs. I started interviewing people because I said I've done it before, which is the same way I became a bartender when I was 18 or 19, just kind of like,

I've always just kind of smile, go home and look it up and just fake it to you make it. It's been my M.O. Because I didn't have that background. So I just knew that I love making stuff that I would love to watch. So I don't know if that means that I'm good at it. I'm sure there's plenty of people who my work is not their taste and they like somebody else's style. But I now know how to get what's in my head onto the screen. And that's a really, really fun feeling.

I like what you said about imposter syndrome. You know, I feel that a little bit sometimes, too. Like at whoop, we're building cutting edge technology. And technically, I didn't study computer science. I didn't study engineering. And even, you know, I'm a young CEO. So I feel like I'm always trying to overcompensate by working a little bit harder on things. Just so, you know, you feel like you belong in some ways.

It's like this sort of, you never want to be too confident, I think is the right way to look. I wouldn't trade it. I mean, I know there's a good science. Psychiatrist could probably break it down and say why it's a bad thing, but I wouldn't trade that. I mentioned before a fear of failure. And that's one of the things that I look for, honestly, when we're hiring people. Yeah. Teach that.

Yeah, I think that's right. When it comes to a fear of failing for what you expect in yourself is one thing, but a fear of failing the team around you is what I really look for. Is that, you know, you may want to go home and you may say, you know what, I can't do an hour or more of this. But if you know that that's going to screw over the editor tomorrow morning and if you don't do this work now and you stay because of that or you do an extra hour of work to make his or her day better tomorrow, that's really what I look for when we're hiring people. Because the training and all that, if you have a modicum of intelligence, you're going to get it. We're not doing brain surgery. But what I look for is that that spirit of wanting to help your teammate. That's why sports has been such an incredible background for me.

you know, from the great coaches that have had, trying to emulate them and just like a work ethic of staying an hour extra in the gym or showing up a half hour early, whatever it takes to get it done. Now, let's get into the last dance. At what point did this become like actually a real project or like a real possibility? Because it could, it feels like in the early stages of talking about it, it would sound almost mythical. Yeah. We're going to do this huge story with Michael Jordan and it sounds like the kind of thing that could keep getting repackaged and undone and done. Oh, and it did.

It did for 18 years before I even certified that this footage existed and that he was interested in participating. So July of 2016 is when I got a call from Mike Tolan, who was the executive producer at Mandalay Sports Media, who was the production company of record on Last Dance. And he invited me out to dinner and asked me if I'd be interested in doing it a series documenting the 9798 season, Michael Jordan's last season. And Michael was going to participate, and they had all this footage that no one I've ever seen before. Of course, yeah, no question.

But then the immediate question was, can we ask about other seasons, who else is going to participate, how long is this thing going to be? There was all sorts of nuts and bolts that had to be figured out that were way above my pay grade because it wasn't, I was used to doing smaller projects an hour, hour and a half, two hours through my own company. But now I'm coming in as just to work for hire. So as you can imagine, when you have partners like Netflix and ESPN and the NBA and the Jordan brand, these are all billion dollar, multi-million dollar entities. Totally.

Used to having their own way. So it took literally years to come to the table and for them to figure out how they were going to split their pie before they even, actually, this is before Netflix and ESPN were involved because the production company, the Jordan brand and the NBA had to figure out, all right, how are we going to agree? What's the licensing deal going to be for all the NBA for it? we're going to use. Right, right. You know, is the Jordan brand got to be compensated, which Michael gave every dime that he was paid for this to a charity of his. Oh, cool.

So while they were doing that, I mean, I can't be at that table. So I went off and I did a doc called Andre the Giant for HBO. Awesome documentary, by the way. Thank you. That took over a year. And when I came out of that, they still hadn't figured things out. So now July 2016 is when they first talked to me. And now fast forward to December 2018.

And Mike Tolan, you know, is one of the big MVP's of this thing because he actually put up a ton of his own money. I said we have to start now. If we're going to get this thing done in time, we can't wait any longer. In time for what? That's a good question because first it was supposed to be 2018, the 20th anniversary of the team. And that was blown out of the water.

There's no way we're doing that. if it takes about a year per hour of archival doc, 10 hours in, you know, one year is impossible unless you have a staff of 100 people. Sorry, that equation is it takes a year to create a one-hour documentary. Give or take, I would say from the inception of the idea to all the research, to pitching it, to getting a distributor, to hiring a staff, shooting, editing, notes, and automation. it's about a year, give or take. That's been my experience.

So the 80s, the 85 Bears was a 30 for 30 I did for ESPN. I started pitching that almost two years to the day before it actually made air. So we ended up doing 10 hours in two years. So we were working at the pace. We had, you know, and a pretty small staff, we only had about 10 of us who were working on it full time. So anyways, Mike put up the money for us to, for us. to actually have an office and have a skeleton crew of people for six months until ESPN, because they were still ironing out to deal with ESPN.

I think Amazon was involved at one point. They pitched to Hulu. They pitched to HBO. And, you know, ESPN had told me it's going to happen. Because I had to turn down other jobs, too. All of us had to make a little bit of a gamble to have this thing happen. So finally, we were working on this, you know, what was supposed to be, an eight-hour, eight-part, one-hour parts documentation.

series. And then May 15th, 2018 were the upfronts in New York for ESPN, which is when all the buyers come in, all the advertising buyers come into the city and each network has their own day. So it's ABC has them one day. NBC has them. ESPN's upfronts were May 15th, 2018. And the first thing they announced was that the last dance was actually happening. And we had cut a trailer on this laptop that I'm talking to you on right now, just three of us in an office. Like we had, we were renting an office in Midtown. There was nothing on the walls. It was just bare bones.

And we hadn't done one interview yet. We used old sound from Michael and just a shot of him at the file line and some cool music. And that was that. And then when the lights came up, they announced it's going to be 10 one-hour parks, which is two hours longer than I was aware of. And that was news to you. Yes. Oh, that's amazing.

Breaking, shocking news to me, yes. So that was May 2018. June 26th, 2018 is the first time we interviewed Michael, and he was about our 9th or 10th interview out of what turned out to be 108. And we just, we shot and edited for the next two years. You hear it's 10 episodes. Are you, are you like, fuck, I'm not ready for that? Or does that get you fired up?

What's your immediate psychological reaction to that? Neither of those, it wasn't, it wasn't at either end of the spectrum. It was just, I, it was very, it was like, well, we're going to have to deep, we're going to have to dig a lot. deeper into stuff that has nothing to do with the Bulls is what I thought at the beginning. So my interview with David Stern, for instance, which was one of the first interviews we did, I went hours with him on his time at Prosskauer, working out-of-house counsel for the NBA and how he started to take a liking.

He had an affinity for NBA players, and he had worked on the Connie Hawkins trial, which is a very famous case in the NBA and how he became the commissioner. Because I thought we were going to have to do deep dives into even the satellite ancillary characters to fill up 10 hours. I'm thinking, I can't tell 10 hours about just the bull. So David actually, David actually was an investor in Whoop and became like a mentor of mine. Like such a brilliant. Yeah, such a brilliant man and may rest in peace. Yeah, it was, you know, I've interviewed him twice and I cherished every single second of that.

It was really fun. it was really fun really enjoys if you come prepared yeah he enjoyed it at this point he was you know commissioner emeritus he literally had an office in a different building on the top floor just by himself the whole yeah i've spent time in that office i'm looking at this this like painting of the uh of the 50 greatest NBA players of all time yeah yeah i know it well corner and it says one of one like you know the painting i have my house is like 18 of 3 000 his is one of one just Everything there is just like you realize you're in the presence of greatness. So I was talking to him about the investigation they did and said Jordan's gambling.

And he said, do we do an investigation? I don't remember. We're on camera now. I said, of course, you know that you did an investigation. He said, I don't know. Who ran that investigation? I said, was Judge Frederick Lacey. He was a former district court judge or former district judge that you enlisted to run this.

He said, oh, yeah, Fred Lacey, yeah. And he would make me answer all the questions before he went into detail about. it. So he made you work for it, but it was in a fun kind of like grandfatherly way. He was just incredible. So I ended up asked, I was obsessed with his story because he grew up, his dad owned a deli and Chelsea, and he grew up reworking class. We talked about his basketball career, which I said that he and I were two lifetime triple single stat members. So I really thought we were going to have to dedicate a large part of an early episode to him and how he changed the NBA to pave the way for a guy like Michael would come in. That's a long answer to your

question, but I immediately thought, like, we're going to have to, the web for this thing just went way wider. And I was genuinely concerned that we were going to dilute the quality of the story that we had. I advocated for four episodes, because I had just seen the Defiant ones, which is a brilliant doc by Alan Hughes that was on HBO about Jimmy. Was that Dre and the Beat's stories sort of? It was broader than that. I mean, that was great. It was incredible. Just everything about it, the storytelling, the aesthetics, the pacing, everything. And I said, you know what? I hope people say that we are biting the style of that doc.

That would be the greatest compliment we could get. That's a great reference because honestly, if I think about my favorite documentaries in the last, you know, 10 years, I think The Last Dance and Defiant Ones are near the top. You know, those are two. The Last Dance is my favorite. But I think Defiant Ones is up there. So I think that's great. And it makes a lot of sense that you were inspired by that now.

thinking about both of them. I'm inspired and eternally curious about iconic figures and what makes them human. Yeah. What separated them? Because all of us walked into the first day of third grade. All of us went to gym class. All of us did these basic things that you do. Where did they deviate?

And what caused that deviation? I've always been really, really interested in that. Now, before you meet MJ, are you, do you have like some outline in your mind of how 10 episodes might flow? Or at this point, are you just sort of like, look, let's get a ton of material and then we'll figure out what the story is after that. I had met with Jordan a couple of times before the first interview because his team was wise enough to put me in front of him and to get to know him a little bit. So it wasn't the first time he had ever met me when he walked in that first day. But yes, you have to have a plan going in. And then if you have to deviate from

that, you know something good happened because something better than what you expect happened and it's causing you to go off course. So you've got the arc in your mind of how those 10 episodes go? We certainly knew that the spine of it chronologically was going to be the 97-98 season and that we were going to flash back to all the eras of the Bulls championships and how that dynasty evolved and how Michael's career evolved leading up to 97-98. But chronologically, it had to be. When I came in, they said, this is called the last dance. It has to be about the 97-98 season.

So we didn't have a choice. I know that some people said the timeline was confusing and why didn't you go chronologically. Well, if we weren't chronologically, we would start in 1984 when Michael was drafted. And then we wouldn't get to the 97-98 season until like episode 8 or 9. And by the way, I've heard that criticism. I think that's dumb criticism because that underestimates the number of stories within the broader story that you were telling. And the best way to tell a lot of those, a lot of those. those smaller stories or to really help people understand some of those characters, I think,

was to do exactly what you did, which was to go back and forth and to, you know, sort of show how these things were evolving. Yeah. And we, listen, I've said this before, too, that no criticism is wrong. If you didn't like it, then it wasn't for you. And I don't fall anyone for saying that. Like, some people work. I think that's a healthy attitude. I mean, we say the same thing here with customer feedback all the time. Yeah. If it's not, if it's going to be. for everyone, then it's going to be, you know, a maximum of a B plus. So it's not, it should hit people the way that I wanted it to hit people, but that's not going to be everybody.

But whether I'm telling a story to friends around a dinner table or if I'm watching a movie, I marvel at people being able to weave chronologies and weave locations into one broader theme. Pulp Fiction is one of the movies that inspired me to say, all right, I'm going to try and do this for a living. Good for you. Not the Pulp Fiction and the last answer are the same animal at all. But I was just so taken aback and in awe of Tarantino's ability to leave all timelines into one story and to find little Easter eggs of what was going on before or after this one moment.

I love that. So I've always been interested in stuff like that. Now, were you more nervous for the first meeting with MJ or for the first interview on camera with MJ? The interview. because the meeting, first of all, the meeting, I didn't have that anticipatory dread of it's on the calendar because it happened. I got to call at 6 o'clock to meet him at 7. Oh, that's almost better.

You're just like, let's go meet him. Way, man. Yeah. The only, the only nerves, you know, I called or I texted a couple of buddies in mine, like, I'm going to meet Michael Jordan in Midtown right now. Like, this is surreal. And one of them said, like, wow, what drink do you order with Michael Jordan? And I was like, oh, shit.

Like, this could be, like, what if he's like a lot of gear or something. So, but then, like I said earlier in our conversation, I think that the, the urgency of doing a good job takes over. So, yeah, I was definitely at all when I came off the elevator and shook his hand because his hand is big feet long. Yeah. And then there was a moment in the middle of our conversation when he leaned forward and I saw the glint off of his earring. And he pointed his finger at me and his finger goes like this. It's like super long and I was like, holy shit, that's Michael Jordan right there. Like I'm actually talking to Michael Jordan.

Because otherwise, he had been kind of in the shadows and very, very cool, con collected. But then he got fired up. We were talking about his Hall of Fame speech and the criticism that he got for that. And this was like 20 minutes into our first meeting. But it was a really good indication from that first, no cameras meeting that he was in this. And so the nerves came, the day of the. actual shoot was the nerves because if you don't do if you don't get what you need out of him I have four editors waiting back in New York and we can't edit these shows without our main

character and we need sound bites and good information from him because we had said we're not going to use the voiceover so we need every single one of our characters to provide every single bit of information that we need to tell this story so I don't know what his what he likes during interviews if he if he takes breaks every half hour if he's going to get up and walk out I asked this question that he doesn't like if he had a bad day on the golf course and he comes and pissed off. I had no idea what to expect. So I was- What time was the interview? Five. Five p.m. Yeah. And we interviewed his best friend, George Kohler, and Michael was the one who stipulated that George Kohler would be listed as his best friend in that documentary.

Isn't that cool? Yeah, people had asked that before. And for people listening, this was Michael's driver who, like, serendipitously became his closest friend. Yeah, exactly. And it wasn't even supposed to. to be his driver because his driver didn't show up in Chicago. The day that Michael landed in Chicago, Michael couldn't find his the limo driver that they had sent, the Bulls had set, and this guy, George Kohler, couldn't find his fare. And it came up to Michael and said, do you need a ride? And now they're best friends. I love that story because it's like literally any day of your life can change your life. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was for George, that was 40 years ago

and it completely changed the trajectory of everything he's done since. And Michael would probably argue the same. So we did him at 11 o'clock that morning in that same house where we interviewed Michael. And where was that? That was in Florida. That was in, yeah, it was a short drive from Michael's home in Florida. So we wanted to be, we wanted to give him that privacy because his homeless sanctuary and, you know, that's smart, traips and through with, especially people you don't know, you don't want them traips and through with gear and lights and all that. Now, did you, did you say, hey, it would be better if you wore this, or, hey, don't smoke a cigar, or hey, you can smoke a cigar, you can have a drink, or you're just kind of like, let's let him just be him.

They asked, what should he wear? Okay. I'm not used to, like, doing, this is a documentary crew. We don't have wardrobe and catering and things like that. So I said, knowing that we were going to get really limited access to him and knowing that I wanted that opening shot of him at the window. Yeah. Great shot, by the way.

Well done. You can credit my brother for that, too, because I wanted, I knew I wanted that shot. When we scouted this house, I wanted an opening shot that was iconic and kind of like... And contemplative, right? Show the grandiosity of him, but him also as a human being, just being reflective or just kind of in repose, you know? Yeah. So I had him facing the camera, like in my mind, and my brother said he should be turned around. He shouldn't see his face.

That's too cheesy, like, to, like, creep up on him. He shouldn't know the camera's there, which was a great call. That was a day out. Great call. Yeah. So you can credit Brandon here with that. But I wanted him to wear something different so that it wasn't obvious that that was the same day that we shot the interview. Yeah, that makes sense too.

But he walked in, literally walked in, and he was like, all right, where do you want me? And I was like, I just need you to sit on that bench there and smoke your cigar for like 10 minutes. We'll do the rest. And then as soon as we finish that, I need you to just pop this shirt off and put on your t-shirt and sit down here. Like that. He chose his wardrobe. I just said come in with two different things. And darker clothing would be better because we're in a huge white space. Now, the first interview with him, what were you trying to accomplish? Two goals for me. One from a practical sense was we need to get enough material to edit

his portions of the first four episodes. So that, and we had had this 10 episode arc already mapped out. So that was, you know, his childhood, his competitive, his competitive roots with his brothers, his UNC days, his high school days, his UNC days, his early days with the Bulls, the traveling cocaine circus. That was a great moment, by the way, when you got a reaction from him on that. Yeah, that was, we can talk about that in a bit, but that was the breakthrough moment for me. Explain that.

So that was, I think it was episode one or two, right, where he talks about coming into the Bulls, right? Yeah, and I said to him, it was a Sam Smith quote from a book that Sam had written and said that you could have called these Bulls, the Chicago Bulls Traveling Cocaine Circus. And he had a huge reaction. Which was so telling because he is schooled enough that he can, he can bob and weave that question and just roll his eyes and sidestep it. But you can see the wheels turning in his head and you wish he would tell that story, but he knows enough. Most athletes and most public figures would know enough just to be like, yeah, those were crazy times. and then move on.

So for him to elicit that laugh, first of all, that then acknowledges the truth of what Sam said, because that was a traveling cocaine circus. So he laughs. He literally slaps his knee, and I had never heard that sound come out of his body and all the research.

I've done two years of research, you know, watching every interview he'd ever done. I never heard that genuine belly laugh out of him. And even that would have been enough, but then he takes this step further and says, I'll tell you about one incident in Peoria and he tells the story of finding that party and he saw, you know, you get your lines over here, your weed over here, your women over here.

I couldn't believe these words were coming out of his mouth because it's so candid. I had never heard any time, especially I had read a stack of books up to my waist about Michael and the Bulls and everything surrounding that. And I never heard this anecdote either. So anytime you're getting something new after two years of research, you know that you've dug deeper than you could possibly want to go. that was a huge moment but but the first that first interview you want enough for the first four episodes and you want I wanted to leave him and not have him say I'm done I wanted to say to him we're done for now because I didn't want him to leave that house that night thinking like oh god that was brutal I don't want to do that again because you know you mean at least one more time

and you don't want him thinking for six months like I'm dreading this right well for me in in watching the documentary when when I saw MJ have that reaction and also there was something about his body position that made him feel like he was in your living room. And you guys did a phenomenal job at this. But for you, the viewer, anyone who's seen Michael Jordan on television doing interviews knows what Michael Jordan giving an interview looks like. And he didn't quite look like that. He looked a little bit more relaxed, a little bit more down to earth. And you elicited responses from him that at least I hadn't seen and I've watched a lot of footage of Michael Jordan because he was like my hero growing up and so I think that was that was the moment where I was like

wow this is going to be a breakthrough documentary if he's like this throughout that was only 20 minutes into that first interview and then 45 minutes into 25 minutes after that was the moment when he chokes up and which was at the end of episode seven so within the first hour we had two nuggets It was like, oh, my God, like, he's actually, he's come to play. I shouldn't be surprised because this guy's going to do everything 100%. But still, you know, I was so nervous that day that it wouldn't go well. I've never, that's probably the most relieved and elated and just energized, invigorated I've ever been was after we finished.

The crew and I, we all went out. And we did a shot at tequila. There was this pool behind the, like, overlooking the ocean. At this point, it was like 9 p.m. And we all did a shot at Tequila. And I said, all right, every single person who was here tonight from the makeup person to the caretaker of the hat, like we're all coming back the next time because we need to, we need to, we have lightning in the bottle and we need to duplicate this exact scenario. Brilliant.

Was it immediately obvious to you just what an insanely competitive person, Michael Jordan is? Yes. He, I mean, I have read all the stories that you have and all other fans have. the second time I met him we met and this is another one that was like can you get up to midtown in an hour kind of thing I think it was the night before and I I didn't have I didn't own a pair of Jordans and I said do I have to wear Jordan because before I was going to an event the time that I had met him before so I was wearing like dress shoes this time was going to be a casual thing we were going to his the Jordan brand classic that the all star the high school all-star game.

And I said, do I have to wear Jordans? And they said, you should. You go into the Jordan brand classic. Like, everyone's going to be wearing Jordans. And I was like, well, Nike's are fine, right? And then we're like, no, you need to get Jordan. So I had to, like, camp out at the Nike store right when they opened because I had to be in Midtown and say at like noon or something.

So I had to go to the Nike store at like 11 whenever they opened and hope that they had a pair, A, that were my size and B, I can't pull off a lot of Jordans. I can wear ones, I can wear like maybe threes or fours if they're pretty basic, but there's some out there that, you know, I admire people who can pull them off. I'm not that guy. So I just got a very basic pair of ones, put them on, and went up to Midtown. I walked into that same lounge in the same hotel. It was the final day of the Masters, 2018, when Patrick Reed won.

Right. So he's there with a couple of his friends, and I'm a huge goal. golf fan too and he was in a pool with some of his friends so he was rooting for read he had read in his kind of flight that they had drafted it's like you know fantasy golf thing i can't imagine it's probably for a jillion dollars i have no idea but super predictable though that you show up and you're watching the masters and jordan's gambled a lot on it i didn't ask him the exact same oh that he was into it um and the first thing he said looked at my feet and said brand new so he knew like that i So we get in the, we paid the bill and we go downstairs to get in this SUV to take us from Midtown to the Barclay Center in Brooklyn for the game itself.

And when we get in the car, I don't even know if he knew my name at that point. Yeah. But I'm sitting next to him in the back seat. And he says out of nowhere, I bet we see 10 pairs of Jordans on the way to the arena. So he doesn't know who I am. There's nothing on the line. it's not for a dollar, it's not for a million dollars, it's for nothing, it's for bragging, right? You just needs to play a game at all times.

I love that, yeah. So that was really informative to me in scripting the interview for him was keep him occupied. Ask the questions that are basic, where did you go or up, what were your early influences, blah, blah, blah, but then say, all right, we're going to play a game, just rapid fire lightning round. I'll ask you a question, give me a one word answer. Just keep him occupied. That's where the iPad came from. Well, I wanted to talk about that because the iPad, I thought, was literally one of the most brilliant things that you did stylistically. Was that something that you had seen done elsewhere?

Like, how did you know that that could work? I know I've seen it. Albert Maisels used it back in, and give me shelter, to show the Rolling Stones footage of a murder that happened at their concert at Altamont. Like, this is not groundbreaking stuff. Right. But it's not something that you see all that often in a sports doc. And it also worked really, really well the times you did it. Well, I think the difference may be that a lot of times I've seen that device used, not the actual tactile device, but the concept.

I've seen it for events, so they have a boxer watch the final round of some match or something like that. But I haven't seen it, and this came from Defiant Ones. The DNA for this is in the Defiant Ones as well, because Defiant Ones did a great job. There's this editorial technique that I've never seen before, which is they would have one person giving a soundbubes. and they were cut to the other person, almost as if they were listening to that person talk. And everything was straight to camera. So when you see Jimmy Iovine nodding like this,

and you hear Bruce Springsteen talking about, you know, like how he came into work on Easter Sunday one time, and that's what changed his career. It was just a really cool way of bringing two people together who weren't in the same room. Yeah, it's brilliant. So that's what I wanted to do with this one. So it kind of killed three or four birds with one stone,

which is that it was a game for him, and he enjoys those, as we said. I don't know him. So me saying, hey, Isaiah said that he doesn't regret, or he regrets the walk off, but blah, blah, blah, whatever Isaiah said. Yeah. Me reading that portion of the transcript

isn't going to have nearly the effect of especially a guy's competitive as Michael seeing Isaiah or Gary Payton or Reggie Miller or even his mom. I can't recreate that. This guy that he doesn't know and is going to meet a few times in his life and he will never see again.

But when he sees his mom, you see him choke up. Yeah, totally. And, you know, he only has $20 to his name and he can't afford stamps. It also came from that day, that Master's Sunday day, we got into a conversation about

whether or not he'd ever been kicked out of the game. And then we started talking about, like, fights that he had been in. And I called up on the phone, I brought up a YouTube clip, a compilation of all of his fights, was set to music. It'll make you want to run through a wall

because it's all of his, like most he took the filler out of my hand and immediately locked in and he started just kind of muttering these anecdotes about like oh yeah this guy said this to me afterwards or he got offended and I didn't and they had to find me later on and I was thinking I need to recreate because this is what I'm going to tell my friends and my brothers and everybody about this day how cool would it be if we could recreate this for the actual show so that's the the basic DNA of it was was kind of threefold I think the Gary Payton one was one of my favorites was it was it was for you so you you headed to him and and he's

like I had no problem with the glove or something he starts he starts like chuckling to himself or whatever it was so perfect Gary is so entertaining anyway anything Gary Payton says is hilarious yeah he's got that way filthy mouth that every other word is an F-bomb but he's just one of those guys and like I mean if he wasn't one of the best point guards of all time he would have been like the next Eddie Murphy. He's so, he's just such a talented, gregarious guy. It was those looks that, like, those are the things that became memes was like his, Michael raising his eyebrows. He's so expressive, you know, you have a lot of icons. Magic is like this, obviously, but like a guy like bird, even a guy like Tiger, and I don't know Tiger, but I've heard behind

closed doors, he's got a really wicked sense of humor and a dry sense of humor, but I don't get the sense that he's as emotive as Michael is. Michael can tell a story. and when he was telling that story about the traveling cocaine circus that party his rookie year he's playing the roles of the guys who are like who is it i say it's mj oh let him man he's just a rookie yeah he's a great storyteller yeah he's an incredible storyteller and that's you don't normally have the blessing of that when you're a filmmaker that your main character is such as i mean Andre the giant he barely spoke and he was he's he's passed away so we didn't have that kind of So this was a luxury to have a guy who could tell a story like that.

So we have a guy like Peyton saying what he's saying about like, we tired him out and I gave him a problem that they had put me on in game one. It would have been a different series. And then you had Michael. It's just go. Just sit there and watch that was so much fun. I thought that was so good. Let's talk about the flu game for a second because that's my favorite sporting event of all time. And I thought it was a real shocker that it came out that it was actually the food poisoning game.

And then since then certain people have criticized that or said maybe that's not actually. happened like what's your take on the whole flu game food poisoning concept well the the food poisoning thing we didn't break news that that's in dozens of books it's just that we it became second nature to us because we made it our job to read every book as totally so people have longed i think i think gatorade probably wanted that to be the flu game and they may have been the ones who coined that the flu game because there was a famous commercial that he had gatorade and there was this magic elixir that that cured the flu in him and right right catapulted them to victory.

So you don't think there's any controversy that? You think it's a pretty clear cut. It was food poisoning. Well, obviously, it's not clear cut because then it's the whole pizza, you know, the pizza controversy. And the original first cut of that, I told our editors to dial it back because Tim Grover, who's his trainer, was adamant. And he was banging the table going, somebody spiked that pizza.

It's fucking ridiculous, guys. I mean, it's one thing if we can infer it, and it's our responsibility to give everybody's side of the story. And obviously, we're not going to go find the pizzeria owner. We don't have the time of the money or the bandwidth to do that. But I say, yeah, it is important to infer that they think that this was, there was something shady about this. I personally think that there's absolutely no way it was deliberate. I do think that when you get the last pizza of the night at a Miranda pizzeria in Salt Lake with peasant. pepperoni pizza, it's probably been sitting there for at least a day.

And if you eat damn near the whole thing and then you smoke a few cigars and probably have a few glasses of wine and you're at altitude, maybe not getting enough sleep, that, yeah, that concoction is not going to agree with your body. But people call it the hangover game. I asked him about that and he said, that's ridiculous. No. I, and I, you know, I want to believe these conspiracy theories too. Jailen Rose, I think, is the one who insists that it was the hangover game.

But you don't wake up at 3 a.m. curled up on the ground in your bathroom, vomiting violently from a hangover. That's not what the hangover is. The whole of us had had like a couple of many glasses of wine and felt like shit the next day. This was not a hangover. This was an acute illness that he had overnight and he was still recovering from it. So I do think it was food poisoning. Obviously, I wasn't there. I just the the Occam's razor section in my brain says it wasn't deliberate this wasn't some like grand conniving scheme to get him out um you know there are instances maybe this would make a good series someday about saboteurs in home cities when Kobe Bryant ate a bad cheeseburger in Sacramento I think someone probably like did something to that cheeseburger and delivered it to Kobe's room because that was in-house hotel room service

going to Kobe Bryant's room. Yeah, right. There's no way they could have known. There's no way they called up the pizza place and said, hey, Michael Jordan needs a pizza. Can you bring? Yeah, right. There's too many holes in the story.

But I do think that he had an actual acute illness. I don't think that he was the flu. I don't think that he was hung over. And I also don't think that there is a conspiracy to bring down Michael Jordan for them to win game five. You know, I thought you did a nice job really hitting a lot of different characters. I mean, we've talked about Michael Jordan considerably. for good reason. But Scotty Pippen got a lot of airtime, I thought, in the series, and

rightfully so. What was your impression of the way Scotty Pippen looks up to Michael Jordan or, you know, sees him as a peer? That relationship. Talk a little bit about that. Scottie was more effusive with his praise of Michael than I expected him to be. Yeah. Scotty Pippen is one of the few guys, I think he'd be even better in today's NBA than he was back then. And back then he was a top 50 player of all time back then. It makes me feel bad because one of the criticisms we've gotten from certain corners is that we did Scotty wrong or we didn't celebrate him enough. And again, I said before, it was not wrong. But I did feel like we went out of our way in the beginning of episode two to show you how integral a part of the success of that team he

was and that Michael said that's the best teammate he's ever had and and you know that he was the perfect fit for this team you know the criticism of him off the court financially was that he signed what was considered a dumb contract seven years 18 million dollars we made the effort to go down to Hamburg, Arkansas and show you the abject poverty from which he came and tell you the story of living 14 people under one small roof two of whom were confined to a wheelchair. I really wanted to go out of our way to show you why he said. signed this deal. And he was doing it because he knew it could all go away in a flash and he had a family of people that he needed to support. So it wasn't a dumb move. It was a conservative one

and one that he outplayed very quickly. But he did sign that deal. And he was warned that you have to live with this contract. Michael was warned the same thing. Michael was making $4 million a year until 1996-97 season. Four million a year, which is a great amount of money to most of us. But he was vastly underpaid. That resentment, I think, actually did come through pretty well in the documentary, whether Scotty intended it to or not. And, you know, I think in general he came across very well. I've actually thought the relationship portrayed by the two of them in the back of my mind was a little bit how I was expecting it would be. There was one glaring exception to my perspective on Scotty, which was the whole reflection around, you know, when Jordan was gone and

there was that playoff series, and Scotty famously sat out. And you asked him a great question, which was, you know, if you could do it all over again, would you still sit out? And I thought it was a real mistake of his to say that he would have sat out. It really showed a weakness there that I wasn't expecting. There was an early cut of it that I felt, I wanted him to correct that sentiment so much that we just left that question out because I was like, you know what, he's killing himself with this,

and I feel bad doing it to the guy. Now, obviously, as a responsible filmmaker, you have to put that in. Totally. Totally had to. And I wouldn't be a responsible filmmaker, journalist, historian, wherever you want to call it. If I didn't ask him that question, would you still do it or do you regret it? I don't even know if I asked him that today if he would change his mind, because the weird part, too, is that he said,

if I had to do it over again I would stand up I think is what he said and when I showed it to people like early rough cuts they were like wait does he mean stand up from the bench and go in or stand up to Phil Jackson and sit down and it was like this weird prepositional

kind of conundrum he had gotten himself into but what he meant and we clarified was that he would still sit down and I asked him if Michael were there not on the team but if he were in the arena sitting two rows behind the bench would you have done that just because he was such a big brother to him and he said that he still would have who knows i know that he's not proud of it and i know that the media oftentimes makes these these dust-ups in a locker room bigger than they are it actually brought that team closer together and then you know

scotty was beloved by that team that's what i didn't realize is that he was the good cop to michael's bad cop yeah Every single teammate of his through all the years. We interviewed, like I said, 108 people. They all adore Scottie Pupon. Well, that came through actually really clearly in the documentary, the good cop that was Scotty Pippen. I just felt like that one answer that he gave was such a miscalculation.

And it must reflect some deep-seated feeling of his that he was still underappreciated in his role. And we don't have to go into it more, but that was just my impression. I think that's true. But, you know, so at that point in the series, and this is when you're putting these things together so rapidly, we were still editing that episode during the pandemic. Yeah.

So it's tough to have a 30,000-foot view of like, okay, is his arc? Because really, if you look at his arc in the series, it's way up, and then he has the migraine game that may or may not have cost them game seven in 1990, and then Michael kind of brings him around, and he becomes the Scotty Pippen All-Star that we know. And then really the next time we hear from him is him sitting out when Michael's gone.

And I knew that he was going to have his redemption in the end because that performance in game six of 98, I think, is the toughest performance by an athlete, certainly a basketball player that I've ever seen. Yeah, we hit the back injury. Any of us who have had back spasms know that it's paralyzing and stabilitated. So he went out there and not only, you know, he was not only a decoy, he actually scored some major buckets down the stretch and can barely move. If you look at him, I mean, he is, he's tilted. He can't, he can't straighten up and stand straight up. So, and then for him to be so magnanimous to say that Phil's the greatest coach of all time, Michael's the greatest player of all time, and that Jerry Krausk is the greatest GM of all time.

After all of this, I knew we had that in our back pocket. That was a very cool statement also that he made, because he didn't like Jerry Krause, and most of those guys, it seems like didn't. Yeah, and I, you know, when he said it in the interview, I remember popping up and I said to him, that's a pretty magnanimous thing to say about someone that you've had all this. He said, well, you know, facts are facts. I mean, look at the guy's record. He is the greatest G-on of all the time. So I thought that was a cool thing for him to do. Do you think that Jordan was fair to Krauss? Do you think that like the animosity there was deserved?

Or do you think it was that Jordan needed to create an enemy even there as more fuel? Probably a combo. I do think that Jerry wanted desperately to do it without Michael. Jerry, you cannot deny his genius in forming these teams. First of all, a couple levels of genius for him. One is that every piece that was put in the place, he put there except for Michael. And obviously, Michael is the alpha and the omega of the Bulls dynasty. We know that.

But to draft Pippin, really find Pippin. One of the best valued contracts ever. Yeah. Well, and that's kind of a line. I mean, he's the GM, so he gets credit for that. Raffed Pippin and Oakley at the same time. And then has really the balls to trade Oakley for Bill Cartwright, knowing that Oakley was both Michael's best friend off the court

and his enforcer on it and still trades for Bill Cartwright, knowing that they have to get past the next, they need a five in that era of the NBA. Who better than the guy who goes against Patrick Ewing every single day in practice? They get Cartwright. Cartwright plays a major role in the early success of those Bulls teams. all the PC put in place, from Kerr to Koo coach, all these things.

Also, to build the team around a two guard is a given now. It was not back then. And he was brilliant to foresee what the league was becoming and to build everything around Michael. But I think that his tragic flaw was that he needed credits so bad that he wanted to blow the whole thing up and show people, look, I can do it with a blank slate. I don't need Michael Jordan. Of course you need Michael Jordan. Of course you do.

And we all know how that's gone for the Bulls, how it went up to now. Jerry, rest in peace, a few years ago, he passed away, but he never had nearly the success that he had with Michael and with that core. So I think it was David Halberstam who said that he wanted more than he got, but he didn't deserve as much as he thought he deserved or something. It was somewhere in the middle, and he always, it was about getting credit. He was the kid who was sitting on the end of the bench his entire life, and now finally he's the boss of these guys.

and he wanted so desperately to have public credit and private acceptance. He wanted to be one of the guys. He's never going to be one of the guys. And we all know, you know, any of us have gone to junior high and know that the more you try to be one of the guys, the more the guys are going to say, like, get out of here, you know. And that's what happened with Jerry. If he just had backed off a little bit, I think things would have been way different. Well, it was the perfect story of if you, you know, if you don't seek credit, you're going to be given it.

And even Scotty saying that he was the best GM, it just makes you realize if he hadn't burned that bridge, what the players would have been saying about him, you know? It really came down to him and Phil. And these guys were so loyal to Phil that they were going to be lockstep with Phil. And in Phil's mind, you brought me in. I brought you all these titles. You know, it was four titles at the point when they were really starting to fall apart. and it became six, of course.

It's amazing that they got from four to six with that tension, by the way. Yeah, it's incredible. But in Jerry's mind, I gave you this shot. If not for me, you'd be coaching like a CYO league in the middle of Montcanner. Well, he does get credit as well, right, for Phil. Like, do I have that correctly in that he was the one who put Phil in the head coaching position, right? That's what I'm saying is that like, so Bill could say, like, okay, you gave the opportunity. but I delivered exponentially more than you ever dreamed I would.

And Jerry's like, yeah, well, I gave you this opportunity. And what it came down to was money. And Phil's saying, he says in the doc when he's talking to Peter Vessie, GM salaries are going to go like this, and head coach salaries are going to go like this. And Jerry didn't think that was the case. And Phil was holding out for more money because he saw the Pat Riley's and the big-name coaches.

we're going to start getting big name money, just like players. And Jerry Krause was aghast at the notion that Phil Jackson would make more than him because he's the who made Phil Jackson. Let's talk about Phil Jackson for a second, because I was as inspired by Phil Jackson as I was at Michael Jordan, not just in the documentary, but in general. Like him as a leader, I think he is such a fascinating figure and so brilliant. And there's a number of times where you were able to really show. this in the documentary, one of the most memorable being when Rodman just dropped off the grid.

And Phil Jackson completely covered for him. He covered for him to the team and he covered for him to the media. And I was thinking about that. If that happened today where you had this sort of like confused athlete, and there's a lot of them today, right? But you had this athlete who was sort of larger than life, very talented but, you know, confused. So many coaches today would have just completely butchered that whole situation. And the media would have been all over it. And in some ways, it was a very contrarian move to completely fall on the sword for Rodman and be like, no, this is fine.

It's all part of the plan. And it was just such a great, it was such a powerful moment of, do you want to be right or do you want to win? And I felt like Phil always had this mindset, we've got to figure out what it takes to win. I don't need to be right in this moment. I don't need to make the point or whatever. we just need to win. It's a great way to put it.

Do you want to be right or do you want to win? Also, think of the environment that you have to cultivate in your workplace for a title wave like that to come in and for everyone to be like, well, we all know our roles. That's just Dennis. He has a different set of rules and we're cool with that. Unbelievable. I hate to be the old man because there's plenty of teams back then who wouldn't have withstood it without that leadership. But the NBA now. Oh, yeah, I get crippled.

You know, we've heard stories about young guys resenting what LeBron had said to them in the meetings after the bucks strike and all, like, so many places inside of sports and outside of sports, people don't know their roles. It's rare that you see a team in place in any environment where everyone knows their roles and respects each other and respects the role that they play. I don't know if there's a better example of that, even as a Patriots, Belichick, know your own. role through your job guy fan than Jackson and the Dennis Rodman era Bulls because he was it was outspoken about the fact that this guy is a different set of rules but as long as he shows up and helps us win no one should care and they didn't that that's the that's the attitude in that locker and he cultivated the other thing that Phil Jackson personifies so well is that as a leader you still have to just be yourself too and be true to who you are as a leader like he didn't try to be

a different version of himself. He brought all of that Zen, you know, forwards. He brought the meditation forwards. He brought, you know, a lot of his, his beliefs in that way. I mean, how much of that, you know, came through for you in interviewing him? So much. I mean, we interviewed him in his backyard in Montana. Perfect.

Perfect place to interview. This guy, you know, he walks in and talks it. It's not like he's saying like Zen and this one with nature thing. And he's living in like a McMansion in Beverly. Hills no that house behind him in the shot he's got two homes on one plot of land in this like really remote section of Montana he built that house with his bare hands he and his brother that log cap cap cap behind him he built it in the 60s or 70s that's cool the guy who it fascinated me so much um how much the the father-son dynamic played a role in all of the main

characters in this doc. Michael is as competitive as he is today because he was fighting for the attention of his father with his brother Larry. Dennis Rodman, according to him, does not have a father. He doesn't refer to having a dad because his dad's name is literally Philander is his dad's name. And his dad has upwards of like 25 kids, lives in the Philippines now. Oh my gosh.

And he doesn't recognize him as a dad. He says, I had no dad. I don't know what that means. Scottie Pippen, obviously, his dad had a stroke. He was working for him for the love to keep his dad alive. Steve Kerr, we know the story about him and his father from episode nine and how close they were and how he cultivated that love of basketball because Malcolm Kerr himself had a love of basketball.

Steve was a ballboy as well. He's a ball boy for UCLA when he was a kid. So, and with Phil, he came from people who actually believe there is going to be a day of reckoning where Christ, came down from the heavens and you were going to be either sent to heaven or hell. This is what he was taught in his home. And you got in your knees and you prayed every morning. He went the complete opposite way and said,

not only am I going to not believe just one thing, I'm going to adopt all religions and see everything that's out there. He calls himself a seeker. He doesn't say that he's Buddhist or Zen or any of that. It is 100% genuine. And it just shows you the respect that he garners. or guys like Michael Jordan will actually sit in a circle. You know, yoga now is commonplace.

If I have a back problem, they'll say go do yoga. 1998, it was like saying like fringe, very frail. Yeah. It's not a thing that you do. And you certainly don't do it before. You don't roll out of yoga mat and meditate before a basketball practice. They would, we didn't get a chance to do this. It's one of the stories that hit the cutting room floor,

but he would keep things fresh so he would cancel practice and he took guys on the Staten Island ferry in New York they were here in New York to play the Knicks and he canceled practice one day and just had the whole team bus go down and hop on the Staten Island ferry and ride around and see the Statue of Liberty.

He is famous for cutting together he can edit himself so he would cut together movie clips that you know that demonstrated certain things about the team coming up so he would play the Wizard of Oz or Pulp Fiction or some of these things. He had practice in the dark one time.

turned out all the lights in the arena and had the guys just move around practicing the dark you would have silent practices no one can speak no one can make a noise he did all of these things I mean I'm sure he's famous for giving the guys books on road trips and we asked everybody but some of the guys read them

and appreciated it and some of them just thought you know that's still being filled but all of those things he still garnered the respect of these these grown men who were elite alpha male athletes he was the alpha in that room Yeah, I mean, he would have to have done all those things with so much confidence and inner belief because even if you were 92% or 98% believing that yoga is the right

thing to do today, you know, Michael Jordan would start laughing at you unless you're 100%, right? By the way, you also need the basketball acumen and the coaching acumen because you're not doing that if you're winning 38 games a year. No one's sitting in a yoga set. Totally. Yeah. He won 55 games that first season without Michael. That might be his great. greatest coaching achievement. Fifty-five games with no Michael Jordan. So amazing. Describe the end of episode seven. I mean, I thought that was a breakthrough, really, in documentary filmmaking. I mean, that one minute will be caught up for, for, you know, the next hundred years of like a perfect moment in sports. And by the way, it might even be one

of the most attributed videos to Michael Jordan's legacy ever. I hope, I mean, I didn't consider that. Seriously. That last two minutes of that episode, where he talks about what it all meant to him and he starts tearing up. I mean, you should know that's like a, that's a real moment. Well, it's very rare that you have a moment behind the camera when you're doing the interview that you know like, okay, that's making it in.

Yeah. There'll be a line or two here or there. Like, that's a funny line. But a moment that you know, all right, that's going to be one of the tent poles that we build to in the series. So I came home from the interview. That's one of the first things that I edited ever. I mean, not ever,

but for the series itself. Let's have this pod. So in the early, early days of editing, September, 2018, October, November, when people came in, family, friends, colleagues, I would show them that to that cut of music. And it was always meant to be the end of, I think episode eight,

how we first structured it, but it was going to be the end of an episode. So when it came time to do that, to actually cut it, we talked before about how I've always been, fascinated by icons and their humanity and demythologizing these people who are, you know, living statues. And in my experience with him, he had been a really nice guy. And of course, you know, you have a limited sample set. People are nice in general. But he had gone out of

his way to be really respectful to the makeup woman and our camera crew. And the few times I'd seen him interacting around other people, he was just a very decent man. I think. thought. Yeah. So I really wondered if he was ambivalent about the persona that he had cultivated through the years of being this like ruthless killer. If he was proud of that or if it was frustrating to him that people didn't recognize him as a nice guy the way they would, you know, Charles Barclay or some other players who have, you know, different public personas. And you can see that look in his face. It's almost like he's almost saying just what that great facial expression like I think I'm a nice guy I don't know well and here's here's

how I felt about it that's there was a longer answer there and we had to cut that down for a time but it's I mean they they should release that entire interview I mean it's just everything that came out of his mouth that day was just like gold but he he's very adamant I think he understands what the price was in terms of like I don't want to say being one of the guys but but there are certain relationships that he had to sacrifice. There's a certain, you know, going out to dinner with the guys that he had to sacrifice in order to be that leader. And there's certainly more than one way to lead.

You know that better than anybody. Tim Duncan knows that better than anybody. Tim Duncan had the, maybe the opposite approach from Michael Jordan, and they both achieved the highest level of success you can in their profession. But I think that he is so, it's so telling that, you know, the only time that he actually starts to break down is when he's talking about how much he wants to win and how much it means to him. He didn't break down when he was talking about his dad's death, and clearly that is something that has left a hole in his heart. But the only time he really got

choked up and the only time he said, I need a break, was because he was so emotional and talking about just how adamant he is that you have to have that philosophy to succeed. Well, goosebumps don't lie, man. I mean, that that scene gave me goosebumps. bumps. Every time I watch it, I'm inspired by it. I really think it's something that'll be watched for decades to come. And I think it epitomizes a lot of who Michael Jordan is. And really the whole journey that was the last dance. So congratulations on that scene, but also the broader, the broader last dance. Thank you, man. Thanks for coming on the podcast, Jason. It's been awesome. You got it, man. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for listening. Thank you to Jason for coming on the WOOP podcast. or reminder, you can use the code Will Ahmed, W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D to get 15% off a W-W-P membership. Don't forget to follow us on social at WOOP at Will Ahmed. Subscribe to the WOOP podcast and stay healthy and in the green.