The Last Dance: Closing the generational gap with Michael Jordan

For those who didn’t get to watch Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan in real-time, leaning on those who did is all we have to understand his impact on the game

Since I was born at some point in the 90s, I have no conscious memory of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls dominating deep in the NBA Playoffs. I’m sure, at some point, my father had Jordan’s games on the TV when I was a child, but no lucid memory comes to mind regarding Jordan’s storied career.

I didn’t get into the NBA until the mid-2000s, deciding to become a fan when Shaquille O’Neal joined Dwyane Wade on the Miami Heat. In many ways, that was the perfect team for me to follow to gain a strong understanding of the NBA’s previous era and the rising era.

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All throughout, though, there has been this gap with Michael Jordan. I just barely missed being able to watch the man who changed the league play in real-time. For free reading in school I often sought out biographies on players I enjoyed watching like O’Neal, but also tried to read up on Jordan.

Still, there was this missing piece between Jordan and my understanding of the sport. There still is.

My introduction to Jordan was literally alongside the Looney Tunes in Space Jam, so I hope you can understand why I viewed Jordan the athlete as a superhero more than I did a real person. That childhood-like connection with Jordan and believing that he literally could have gone to another planet to save Bugs Bunny sticks in the back of my mind.

The Last Dance has really helped me learn more about Jordan, his impact on the game, and just exactly what it was like to watch him in the 90s. I have resounding jealousy for those that got to watch him in real-time.

Still, gaps exist, so I called on my colleague Mark Carman, the biggest MJ fan I know, to help me get a better feel for Jordan’s impact.

Carman has a Chicago sports podcast, Da Windy City, in which he reacts to each week’s episodes of The Last Dance, and it’s worth checking out over the next three weeks and beyond.

Listen to “Da Windy City with Mark Carman” on Spreaker.

Here’s Mark, helping me understand Jordan’s impact:

JW: What is the sole greatest Michael Jordan moment you remember, where were you, and what was your reaction?

MC: 1989 Game 5 versus Cleveland. I was in my living room in Highland Park watching with my dad. My dad was the stoic type who rarely got excited, but when Jordan hit the shot to beat Cleveland even he jumped up off the couch. There was so much joy and validation in making that shot. The Bulls had won one playoff series to that point in Jordan’s career. They had been swept by Boston twice. That shot put the team and Jordan on a different level.

JW: Michael Jordan is arguably the reason the personality of NBA players are so marketable and widely consumed by fans today. Who would you say was the biggest rival in terms of totally captivating basketball fans for MJ in the 80s and 90s?

MC: In the 80s it was Larry Bird and Magic Johnson and to some extent Dr. J. The doctor was considered first-class and when he retired in 1985, it was a big deal.

The Bad Boys had their thing too with Isiah Thomas being the face of the team. Overall, it was Jordan trying to catch up to Bird and Magic as the best player in the game.

It wasn’t until the Bulls won it all in 1991 that he was universally considered the best player in basketball. Also, Converse had all the star NBA players. Bird, Magic, Mark Aguirre, Isiah, Bernard King all endorsed the Converse Weapon. Jordan took them all down with Nike.

JW: I’m used to the biggest stars staying in college for at most one year. What do you think Jordan would have accomplished had he gone to school in this era, with more professional years to develop?

MC: Jordan needed one year of college to bloom. Being with Dean Smith helped him a ton with the fundamentals. Smith held him back scoring the basketball but fundamentally zoomed him ahead.

If Jordan had come out after one season, he would have been ready to be a high-level player. I’m not sure if he would have been Rookie of the Year. That class had James Worthy, Dominique Wilkins, Terry Cummings and the Bulls were drafting 7th. Jordan still may have ended up in Chicago, which was the perfect play for him. Here is the ball, go get em.

Undoubtedly, Jordan’s numbers would be even greater if he played two more years of professional basketball but his scoring average might dip a drop.

JW: Did Michael Jordan make the Olympics more important? What do you think about star players today skipping out on being a part of the qualifying teams?

MC: The craziest thing to me about the Olympics in 1984 was that team of amateurs playing NBA talent to get ready.

Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin went 8-0 leading up the games and some of those games were hotly contested. The 1992 Dream Team absolutely made the Olympics more important. There was a ton of attention paid to it. The Bulls were at the height of their powers, back-to-back champs. Jordan was extremely popular. I don’t ever remember there being that much focus on the Olympic games from a basketball standpoint. The only thing that compares to me was Mary Lou Retton and the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Retton was a big deal on Wheaties boxes, marketed like crazy, but not on the Dream Team level.

JW: Michael was so marketable and foresightful in creating and promoting the Jordan brand. Athletes have tried — Dwyane Wade with Li-Ning, Stephon Marbury with Starbury — to create their own athletic brands, but none even come close to that of what Jordan established. Who today do you think has the pull, aside from LeBron, to create something like that?

MC: No one.

I don’t think that any athlete will approach the impact Jordan has had becoming a global brand. Tiger was the closest in my mind, being a unicorn in the golf world and partnering with Nike. Jordan had the charisma, talent and timing all blended into one.

JW: As a (Upstate) New Yorker, the closest thing I can think of in terms of star power that I obsessed over to the degree that many did about Jordan is Derek Jeter. I’m now seeing him run an MLB franchise to the ground, similar to what Jordan is doing with the Hornets. Why can’t incredible athletes properly lead successful franchises?

MC: At the end of the day, I think they enjoy playing way more than spending hours going over film or traveling to gyms to watch players. They are also perfectionists who probably don’t have a lot of nuance in what they are looking for and pigeon hole talent pretty quickly. Just because you are great at playing the game, doesn’t mean you have the patience or desire to evaluate the game.

JW: Growing up four hours from the closest pro sports team, kids from my school basically picked the most popular player and followed their team. As you might imagine, we had a lot of Lakers, Cavs, and Heat fans (and even some Thunder fans when they had a little big 3 going). How did Chicagoans view the national bandwagoning that was happening for Jordan and the Bulls at the time?

MC: Overall, we loved it. The Chicago Bulls being the biggest sports story globally was awesome. Chicago had been known for Al Capone before that. Now it was known as the home of Michael Jordan. I did my best to get tickets for my friends at the time who I met in college that had never seen Jordan play in person. I loved seeing someone wear a Bulls shirt on vacation. It was and still is a sense of Chicago pride.

The Last Dance continues on Sunday night at 9pm Eastern. Catch Carm’s reaction on Da Windy City Podcast.