The Last Dance: In Praise of One Lone Gold Hoop Earring

He was always pretty good friends with Leroy Smith. Don't think there was animosity there.

ha ok so it literally was just some coach who only picked upperclassmen

Smith and Michael Jordan were childhood friends who played together on their ninth-grade basketball squad. In 1978, during their second year at Emsley A. Laney High School, both tried out for the lone sophomore opening on the varsity basketball team.

and yet

In 1991, Jordan acknowledged the impact of the event, "It all started when Coach Herring cut me. What it did was instill some values in me. It was a lesson to me to dig within myself."

the coach was dumb doesnt have the same ring there is no life lesson

In 1991 Jordan knew what to say when talking to interviewers.

jordan is very good at knowing what to say i give him credit he is a very smooth individual at basketball and handling the media

and having excellent sneakers

was thinking abt how jordans have been the premiere sneaker basically since they launched, pretty wild

Man the moment after winning the first threepeat where they’re mic-ing him up and he sorta exhaustedly asks “can i just have a few minutes here?”

and, of course, michael shittalking kobe at the all-star game

in loving memory

if they had footage of MJ betting on two flies crawling up a wall i would not bat an eyelid

idk if anyones heard that story in more detail ive only ever seen it like how it was in the doc michael didnt make the team and was sad for one day but then after that he was determined and became amazing at basketball, like who made the team ahead of him what was the whole deal how good was he then

― lag∞n, Sunday, May 3, 2020 8:58 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

the timeline is weird like he didnt make the sophmore team, and then at some point between then and college north carolina came to the conclusion he was the best player in high school basketball, what was the interval between not making the team and being the best in the whole damn country, i mean i get that he grew but six one is plenty tall enough to play high school basketball, theres are tons of 6-1 guys in the pros

― lag∞n, Sunday, May 3, 2020 9:03 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

i don't remember the specifics well enough but i did read roland lazenby's michael book and the vibe was definitely that he was never some sort of incredible prospect but more someone who gradually built his game over time.

i'll try to skim it soon and see if there are some good details.

― call all destroyer, Sunday, May 3, 2020 9:12 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

im calling bullshit i think there was a coverup something weird happened

― lag∞n, Sunday, May 3, 2020 9:13 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

skipping to the end of the thread, i don't care what else happened, but this is right.

i read the rest of the thread, don't see anything that says it wasn't a conspiracy

add me to the list of ilxors wondering what is up with MJ's red-ass eyes

ok serioulsy what is going one with that security guy flipping coins w MJ?

is that a real person? He looks like a Safdie bros walk-on. Hoping he gets his own episode because...wow

love that guy! he was on an earlier episode but him miming the MG shrug was the best

that hair tho

the whole thing—the hair the shoes the tie the accent

I want a spinoff doc

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/oak-lawn-il/john-wozniak-9005145

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXLqer5U8AAGnzb?format=jpg&name=small

oh shit.

shit!

i forgot about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zugK5Tf4vJ8

This may be the best part of “The Last Dance” so far. Perm guy breaking out the Jordan shrug after beating him in quarters gambling. pic.twitter.com/FuukklLyIG

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) May 4, 2020

^ for posterity

like to think that by year 3 jerry krause was calculating early in the season which teams the bulls were likely to face in the play offs and lavishing praise on a select couple of their players just so michael would eviscerate them.

the level of that vindictiveness was kinda frightening. I mean, i get it (sort of) but holy shit

not only burn the bridge but set fire to the river

It is kinda frightening. and I'm still lol-ing at "mad at Drexler just for existing"; it was moreso mad at media for having the nerve to compare Clyde to MJ, but still. But to compare the 2 for a sec here, I can't help but see how Drexler NOT being a psycho dickhead "competitor" hampered him. I don't think he had the full skillset like MJ had but more than that, he seemed too nice and unassuming to compete head to head with MJ.

Clyde wanted the W, loved the game, had sweet skills, but he never wanted to tear your beating heart out of your chest and hold it in front of your dying eyes, as MJ so often wished to do.

jordan is very good at knowing what to say i give him credit he is a very smooth individual at basketball and handling the media

― lag∞n, Sunday, May 3, 2020 11:34 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this has been 1 of my takeaways too honestly

the great thing about this SNES game is that forensic analytics show that one ever played as the blazers. 100.0% of SNES players chose to play as the bulls

https://i.imgur.com/msuf76Z.jpg

jordan is very good at knowing what to say i give him credit he is a very smooth individual at basketball and handling the media

― lag∞n, Sunday, May 3, 2020 11:34 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this has been 1 of my takeaways too honestly

― johnny crunch, Monday, May 4, 2020 2:39 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Seemed p comfortable talking to random kids with terminal illness/Jerry Seinfeld (who did not seem comfortable but rather extremely starstruck) too.

I guess what's getting the short shrift is his intelligence. Yes he was supremely gifted physically and had the psycho competitiveness, but it's his intelligence that allowed him to apply those 2 to maximum effect.

Yeah Jordan really seens to have made it his job to be as good at being a mega worldwide celebrity as being an athlete

obviously early he had good guidance from his mom keeping him in that lane (ie Nike meeting) which is really something you cant underrate the value of, given hardheaded young stars often don’t have, don’t ask for or don’t heed that kind of guidance. he was able to fight off the immature “i hate all this shit i just want to play” for a lot of his career pre first retirement

it’s really impressive

and granny otm

yeah obvs an astute and engaged guy and def managed to do it his way despite everyone wanting a piece of him

i do think a lot of his way was dullard a-dog mythologizing bullshit that business school guys love but a lot of that is really pushed more by tedious sportswriters than by jordan himself, and obvs he was one of the best athletes ever and somehow even more entertaining than he shouldve been had cool sneakers and radiated charisma

the gambling i find really interesting troubling

untangling his ideas about gambling addiction, say

like you don’t have to be putting up your house as collateral or depriving your family of food to be addicted. there’s such a thing as a functioning addict

and being addicted to competing feeds the gambling.

like, dude: if you can’t compete with financial stakes to get off, you MAY have a gambling addiction

*without financial stakes

calling kobe that little guy from the lakers lmao dude he literally modeled his entire existence off of you and your success wins system have some compassion

if you are rolling to Atlantic City the night before a playoff and you are using high-stakes gambling as a means to ~calm down~

... you MAY have a gambling addiction

its just betting a few hundo thou to take the edge off

#hoooboy

seems like a person with just an extremely high energy level and a lot of his life was figuring out how to channel it

Woz hustled the absolute hell out of Jordan in the third game, he got MJ to agree to book an even money payout when Jordan was nearly a 10:1 underdog.

Jordan went out to the court minutes later and beat the Celtics by 23.https://t.co/pTNnGtEq0a pic.twitter.com/aOt3mS4Y9R

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) May 4, 2020

as an anti-gambler, I'd say he def had/has gambling addiction

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXLjQnWU4AEBg_G?format=jpg&name=small

like you don’t have to be putting up your house as collateral or depriving your family of food to be addicted. there’s such a thing as a functioning addict

one good way to be a functioning gambling addict is to have so much fucking money it's hard to blow it all

exactly!!

I can't help but see how Drexler NOT being a psycho dickhead "competitor" hampered him.

Michael was this weird blend of mental illness, astonishing physical prowess, intelligence, creativity and basketball skill that rendered him pretty much inarguably that much better than Drexler and, on any given night, better defensively and offensively than anyone on the court. The only other modern era player I thought came close to Michael's skillset and approach was Kobe. Which is not to say that, say, LeBron or Steph are "worse" than MJ; they just were playing a different game with different bodies in a different league.