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

the Jordan baseball 30 for 30 is really good
i might give it a rewatch myself

uh won not 1 xp

yeah loved the stuff with his Barons teammates and his realtor

yah the bad boys, rodman and jordan baseball 30 for 30s are good supplemental viewing for this

A lot of ppl thought it was just a reaction to his father's murder and he'd "snap out of it".

Going back to our earlier "is it helpful to be a psychopath and if not which players were able to pull it off and be competitive" conversation, Dave Zirin suggests Bill Russell.
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/last-dance-espn/

Jordan was pure capitalism: expanding his brand off the court, and a cutthroat bully with his own team. Russell was pure resistance: finding love and solidarity among teammates and fiercely holding onto his sense of self off of the court. His white teammates who didn’t show him solidarity, particularly on Russell’s proud struggles against racism, still loved him then and feel guilty today that they didn’t do more. One gets the feeling that the only regrets Jordan’s teammates have is that they didn’t stand up to him more and instead let him break their will. Russell had teammates who became his brothers for life. Jordan has generated only wary respect and resentful awe. The only people who “ride or die” for Jordan are personal assistants, trainers, and bodyguards: people paid to be in his presence.

If The Last Dance had courage, it would be a cautionary tale instead of a hagiography. It would not only explore the price of greatness, or whatever such branded nonsense. It would be a warning: You don’t need to act this way if you want to win. It’s actually antithetical to what’s best about sports. You can get away with being the bully when you’re the best player on the planet. But being able to bully someone is not the same as a justification to do so. It’s exercising power over someone just for the sake of doing so. That’s not admirable. That’s abusive.

that last para some overwrought bollocks

he shouted at teammates and was probably unpleasant to be around at times, and probably fun at other times, let's not pretend he traumatised a bunch of athletes for life or something.

ffs " antithetical to what’s best about sports" wtf does that even mean?

yeah idk if the doc is just soft peddling what a jerk he was but c'mon I've played with dudes on softball teams who needled their teammates the same way, I don't really see him crossing the line in any of this

as a human tho, Russell>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>MJ

i think almost all the alltime greats prob did it w being less of a jerk than jordan not trying to condemn the man or nothin but obvs he was just being an ahole and reveling in it, i mean it mightve been necessary for his process but being that level of jerk is clearly not necessary for or even conducive to athletic achievement in general, being a mild to moderate asshole is obvs common amongst bigtime ballers tho

i think it's clear jordan's relentless badgering bordered on abusive. frankly watching this doc is slightly claustrophobic for me - jordan's seething, needling, bullying neediness. it's everywhere. he's like a balloon ready to pop. and there are a lot of episodes. it's a really heavy dose. the idea of actually being around that all the time, being the target of that - yikes. when he hands a teammate (who?) some tickets to the game and asks if they need to be good seats, and the guy says 'naw, they can be up next to god' and jordan's like 'you can tell em god gave em to ya' where the joke is that jordan is god - it's like ffs. this comparison's slightly ott but it's a little like how trump manages to make everything about him. you can feel his energy from three planets away. you can't just practice in peace. i love when they ask scottie how the next year was, after mj retired the first time and he breaks into this big grin. 'it was great.'

xp I think this is unfortunately the case more often than not w the "all time greats" in most any field, or among musicians painters writers filmmakers etc anyway

something to do w/ recognizing your talent and feeling an urgency/impatience to have it manifested

being competitive.....

Haven't felt any of what tracer describes watching this doc tbh. The most disturbing/ holy shit thing to me was his off season/space jam workout and practice regimim. How did he not die?

I mean he says that he never asked his teammates to do anything he himself wasn't doing but even if you negate talent it's prob not feasible for 99.9% of actual humans to work that hard.

And he doesn' t see that cos as far as he' s concerned why can' t they? There's nothing stopping them.

this may be just the fact that i have consumed a fair amount of jordan being an asshole content in the past speaking but in the doc all of his teammates even the ones who were defending him acknowledged that he was being a noteworthily huge asshole

as for individual acts yeah a lot of it isnt really that bad but i think its more that hes doing it all the time hes browbeating people, havent finished the latests eps not sure if punching teammates has been covered

this idea that he was doing it purely to motivate ppl is obvs ridiculous, hes styling on his teammates owning the hell out of them cause he can and he likes it, and i mean it is sports but long story short yeah prob pretty unpleasant to be around

they cover the kerr punch but kerr threw the first blow so that didnt look too bad on mike

honestly never knew kerr threw the first punch but mj made it clear he fouled the shit out of him, so that was clearly the instigating factor

this doc has actually made me think he's less of a dick than i thought he was previously.

same, I kinda forgot how charismatic and funny he was, especially compared to guys like Kobe and LeBron

that said the doc is def edited in his favor

yah its p much a puff piece

being a mild to moderate asshole is obvs common amongst bigtime ballers tho

I wonder if he ever took that fact in and thought "well then if I'm an even bigger asshole, I'll be that much better of a baller!"

i bet he did lol

this doc has actually made me think he's less of a dick than i thought he was previously.

― Spottie, Wednesday, May 13, 2020 6:28 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

same, I kinda forgot how charismatic and funny he was, especially compared to guys like Kobe and LeBron

that said the doc is def edited in his favor

― frogbs, Wednesday, May 13, 2020 6:34 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

agree w all of this and for me its not that hes seemed like less of an asshole just that other sides of his personality are being revealed that temper it, also hes prob a pretty different person now than when he played its been a while people change

i see zirin is yet another in the long line of people who are confused why a michael jordan documentary, made with the cooperation and editorial signoff of michael jordan, isn't more critical of michael jordan.

wonder what the deal is with jordan not allowing them to use the old footage until now is, like why didnt he want it out there its odd

it probably really was difficult and emotional for him to relive all this stuff on camera. i actually think the timing is perfect now that there's a whole generation that never really saw him and thinks lebron is the best player.

this is prob going to sound weird but hearing MJ talk about his mindset helped me understand my Mum - wrt sports as a kid. She was super competitive, natural talent at everything & won basically every game she played bc she had that deep will to win.
she would try to push me to compete harder in tennis or netball etc & i just didnt want to, bc i wasnt competitive & sport was just something to do. We fought so hard about it!!

But I kinda see that she had that same MJ mindset even though it was crazily misplaced on me lol

Doesnt change anything but the new perspective is interesting

def a savvy move to do it now xp

the fact that basketball stopped right be for it came out wasnt bad for it either

seriously, i wonder where it's going to go down among most-watched docs.

Those other docs better not talk shit.

def getting a serious airing

well deserved imo its really well done tbh 10eps of jordan wasnt that appealing to me but im rapt

some other 30 for 30s that people raved over i didnt really think were that good but this one is

nice to have so much raw footage from 97-98

yeah that stuffs a gold mine, and then the interviews have been great too

the bit where they give them the ipads is so good

seems like an obvious move and yet

it's brilliant. the director is def a talented guy. my spouse is not a basketball fan at all and she's been locked in every week.

yeah it stands on its own

i have a young friend, he's like idk 24, who grew up a lakers & kobe stan (he thought kobe was the GOAT, i have since talked him out of this nonsense using STATISTICS) and he is utterly enthralled by this doc. i think to him MJ was this ghost who he never got to see and the way he lorded over so much nba discussion turned the kid off, but seeing all this footage the guy is suddenly the world's biggest MJ fan which is neat to see happen

good for the youth to receive an education

prob that he's an absolute nth level degenerate gambler and competition addict can relate to mj on that primal level

i noticed today that bball-ref has some spotty mj high school stats (probably someone went out and looked at old copies of the wilmington, nc, newspaper), and lol, he apparently scored 45 pts in a jv game. maybe helps put "cut from the varsity" in context.

I feel like MJ was a dick to his teammates but it never reached any sort of level where it might impact their performance negatively. I can’t say this for, for example, Kevin Garnett