On the morning of the Cleveland Cavaliers championship parade in 2016 Michael Jordan greenlit The Last Dance documentary. Here’s why the timing was perfect.
As we near the premiere of ESPN’s Michael Jordan documentary, The Last Dance, we learn more and more about the production, the development, the how’s and why’s of the project. Saturday afternoon, ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne revealed that Jordan greenlit the project on the morning of the Cleveland Cavaliers championship parade in 2016.
The timing couldn’t have been more perfect, both then and now.
For decades now, producers were stacked on top of each other trying to pitch Jordan on the perfect documentary. Shelburne explains:
"Every few years a producer would come along, pitching himself as the right person to make the documentary. Frank Marshall, Spike Lee, even actor Danny DeVito gave it a whirl.According to Jordan’s longtime business partner, Curtis Polk, none of them ever even made it to a face-to-face meeting with Jordan."
Jordan didn’t seem especially eager to bring it to light, and considering he wasn’t motivated to do so the threshold for engaging him on it was incredibly high.
Finally, producer Mike Tollin happened upon the right formula: A sprawling multi-episode docu-series, one with a wide enough scope to allow character development and true exploration of the story and stories of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
Shelburne continues:
"“So there’s Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar], there’s Hank Aaron, there’s ‘Varsity Blues,’ there’s ‘Coach Carter’ and so forth,” Tollin said. “He’s actually looking at them all, and in the bottom right corner is ‘Iverson.’ He goes, ‘You did that?'”Tollin didn’t answer. Jordan repeated the question.Tollin wondered if this was going to work for or against him. Like the timing with the Cavaliers’ championship parade that morning, it was impossible to know.Tollin mumbled a cautious, “Yes.”Jordan took his glasses off, looked up and said, “I watched that thing three times. Made me cry. Love that little guy.”Then he walked around the desk, extended his hand and said, “Let’s do it.”"
To be honest, the Iverson documentary might not have been the catalyst. And perhaps that morning’s championship parade through the streets of Cleveland wasn’t the catalyst either, but it probably played a role.
Not just because LeBron James had finally brought a championship to Cleveland. After all, if we’re ring-counting, that was only his third. It’s safe to say now as it was back then that James probably won’t catch Jordan’s total of six NBA championships.
Perhaps more than anything, the NBA had hit a period of peak greatness. LeBron James at his best. The Golden State Warriors poised to become the greatest dynasty since the Chicago Bulls of Jordan himself (whether they would live up to that mantle was anybody’s guess in 2016).
There had been no challenge to Jordan’s legacy in the time he was gone. The Los Angeles Lakers had their three-peat but infighting was their eventual doom. They couldn’t keep it together long enough to be mentioned in the same breath as the Bulls, even though they came along right after their reign ended.
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The Miami Heat of James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade weren’t together long enough. Right off the bat they were beaten by the Dallas Mavericks in a stunning upset in their first NBA Finals together. That squad got taken off the map in the Jordan discussion before they were even on it.
The San Antonio Spurs were a different kind of beast. They won title after title, but they were spread from the end of the Jordan years to the beginning of the Golden State Warriors era. Their greatness was unquestionable, but that run has nothing in common with the Jordan Bulls.
When the Golden State Warriors went to their second-straight NBA Finals on the strength of a 73-9 record, better than even the 1995-96 Bulls, Jordan’s radar had to go off. When behind the strength of a superhuman effort from Jordan’s only real challenge in the GOAT discussion, the Cleveland Cavaliers BEAT those Warriors, the Red Alert klaxons must have sounded.
Would the Warriors, then still young and now hungrier than ever, armed with massive cap space due to a spike in the salary cap, position themselves for a historic revenge tour aimed squarely at not just LeBron James but Michael Jordan himself? Worse still, would James go on a historic run with the Cavs? Could the challenge become more than hypothetical?
As it happens, the Warriors would add Kevin Durant and win two more championships before getting unseated by both horrible injury luck and the Toronto Raptors. LeBron James would move on to the Los Angeles Lakers and thanks to injury and pandemic has not yet played a game as a Laker any later than mid-March.
At the time though, Jordan was right to see these two factors as impinging upon his supreme greatness. Who could predict what direction they would go from that pivotal point in 2016? The time was then to make sure the world would remember Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, and The Last Dance was the perfect vehicle to ensure that it would.
While Jordan picked the right time to agree to greenlight the project, The Last Dance comes at the right time for us too. We’re not just sitting home with no sports these days. Great uncertainty swirls around us as the entire planet copes with COVID-19. It’s not just a period of peak boredom, it’s a period of peak challenge.
It’s also a period of maximum loss. We barely had time to adequately grieve Kobe Bryant‘s loss when the pandemic struck, and as a collective, all these events impact each of us.
The Last Dance comes at a time when we need to see some greatness. In a way, perhaps unlike any other time in recent history, we’ll have the opportunity to come together on a singular thing.
We can be quite sure Michael Jordan’s intention was never to give sports fans the world over solace and comfort from the cold world outside when he greenlit this project, but as an unintended consequence, we can be glad it will.