Michael Jordan: the last dance of the greatest in history

I asked persistent questions to my friend George about a party in 1993. Memory need not favor, before getting into the tricks of the mind for ‘Last Dance,’ the 10-episode documentary about Chicago’s successful last year. Bulls. which has long produced the best trailer I’ve ever seen. The questions referred to a time 27 years ago. George struggled to remember. It was a friend’s party, because that year, that class graduated from elementary school. He remembered the party and remembered the name and from there everything started to go wrong.

Because that afternoon party took place on the day of the Bulls’ sixth final with the Phoenix Suns in 1993. It’s not the best series of finals ever, but it’s the best series of finals I’ve ever seen, even though They have been more exciting in the future. The reason is, of course, clear. The 12 Mayes, even disappeared, during which I lived and my eyes were filled with what my mouth could not bear. Michael Jordan, so to speak, is food for the eyes.

Jordan has been considered by my boss for over a decade as the best athlete in the universe. Although it was a significant disadvantage compared to the boxer, swimmer, fighter, and track and field athlete, this was not an issue. It was the detail that would play no role in belief and history. Those who supported Clyde Drexler and Charles Barkley, Gary Payton and John Stockton and Carl Malone in the finals of ’92, ’93, ’96 and ’97 and ’98 were almost like those who, without supporting PAOK, chose Bane Nikos Galis Prelevic: They belonged to Hezbollah. How was it possible to support Malone and Stockton? It looked like someone who chose soy beer over regular beer, not for health reasons but because it was tastier!

Jordan was lucky to play at the time. It is estimated that he would now score 50 points on average in the NBA. Jalen Rose, an ESPN analyst who had left much of his mark in the Western Conference finals in 1998 (as well as Kobe Bryant, in the 81st game against the Raptors), estimated that “Today he would score 7 points more than his best year”That is, the 1986-1987 season, the day after he scored 63 points in the legendary ‘Boston Garden’ against Larry Byrd and the Boston Celtics, when he scored 37.1 points per game. So, the season would end around 45.

However, he was lucky, because the coverage of the games did not involve the terrifying details, which now, jokingly and sometimes out of nostalgia, his teammates remember at the time. Bryant didn’t notice: he was a heartless boy. Even worse, Jordan would be a shameless guy with no trace of humanity, whose mind would have changed. That is, everything that was, but in a global transmission. It is obvious that full reports and a large number of people in broadband would have visited him in a clinic to eliminate the toxicity with which he wanted to prevail and overcome himself. During the ‘Dream Team’ adventure in 1992 in Barcelona, ​​they had stories to tell about the … psychopathic basis of their thinking. Jordan did things because he was Jordan, journalists did it right or did not write them, and his teammates underwent training and wondered when he would stop using violence against them. The story is well known to Steve Kerr, who didn’t let him intimidate him in training, as a result of which they traded blows, earning his respect.

Imagine the privilege that the documentary cameramen had, in the agreement they made with the Bulls, to have a pass in all places where the team circulated. For 1998, that was incredible. It was a time when all the players were outraged at the fact that Jerry Krause had been warned that Phil Jackson would not continue. Dennis Rodman said in an interview with Scotty Pipen’s “The Jump” a few days ago that if they stayed together, even though they were old, they could get the 1999 ring, that is, the year the Blockade took place and the season it was limited to 50 games. He went further and said that the Bulls would do … 50-0 in the regular season. Of course, the end of 1998 is the most memorable in history. The playoffs for 86-85, the steal of Malone and his hand-raised shot and the surprising minimal description of Bob Costa, are a triptych that cannot be repeated.

Number 23, which retired in 1994 and returned in 1995, changed again at age 45, during the Eastern Conference finals with the Orlando Magic, never speaking with less than 10 microphones. The wild joy that gives me the scene in the trailer where Jordan kicks a box, if it is not unique, in some comparisons it is left behind in none, notably. The first time I saw it, I was existentially shocked, wondering if anyone had actually been found to film this scene. The whole trailer is epic, which is why the documentary, which will be shown from Easter Sunday on ESPN and Netflix, is one of the reasons to put Netflix on. Serious, since it is a social disease that has caused people to rot long before quarantine.

Jordan was the best of all, not only at the time, of course, but up until now. He played in the East and did his job against lesser-known brands and with the Celtics in obvious crisis, he disconnected the Detroit Pistons after 3 years and found himself the boss of the NBA. Obviously, this is the player that defined a specific generation, especially the Greeks, since on television the NBA landed mainly with the start of private channels. The confidence that the potential viewer group felt was indescribable. A game with the Atlanta Hawks, who put the last shot in front of Steven Smith and celebrated with how he would repeat in the first NBA Finals in 1997 with the Jazz (and which would traditionally beat Bryant in the fourth game of the first round in the West for the 2006 playoffs with the Suns, when he put the winning basket, with his elbow 90 degrees and his fist upright), was indicative: Jordan was wrong that night. Again, he found a way to win.

That is why the discussions that are still taking place are endless. There is no time to ‘kill’ on a show, as long as there are Jordan disputes with the Bulls. Could they have won eight consecutive championships if it hadn’t stopped suddenly in 1993? Would they beat the Warriors 73-96 in 2016? Can LeBron James nominate the best in history while Jordan exists? Bryant was better?

No Jordan had never lost a 24-point lead at his side, as the Bryant Lakers did in Game 3 against the Celtics at the Staples Center in 2008, nor, of course, he hesitated to shoot, for whatever reason, as he did. James. in the sixth final of 2011, with the Miami Heat against the Dallas Mavericks. And he could score any number he wanted, but with nothing he could capture the atmosphere and electricity created by the basketball dynasty, or he was a one-time crescendo with 13 accurate shots in the 1991 third final with the Lakers at the ‘Chicago Stadium’ or a visit to ‘Madison Square Garden’ for a game with the Knicks, which each time seemed like the concert of the year.

And he was willing to believe everything, regardless of whether it was true: that his father’s death was cleaning accounts with the mafia, that the then NBA commissioner David Stern ordered him to stop playing basketball and that 8 years later, in the inconceivable catastrophe. de las Torres Gemelas, begged him to raise the stock indices again. Could you pass me the most unlikely sequence of events in history and write it down, re-enact it, and broadcast it in conversation.

The truth is, Jordan never articulated a political speech, nor did he take a stand on racist issues when he was in his dozen. Either he devoted himself to basketball or he diplomatically embraced him shut up and dribble which was the “white” command for capable black athletes. Whatever the truth, he’s never been better than him on the basketball court. And when the young man’s uncle replied in the movie ‘Incompatible Charm’, when he asked him for the first time “Why is Jordan the best of all time?”, “Because he always saved something for last.” In this case, the last dance.