With the final installation of the 10-part Michael Jordan documentary “The Last Dance” airing last night, I find myself being fascinated with what exactly it is about Michael Jordan that we find so fascinating. Obviously, he may be the greatest athlete many people have ever seen. There is something that makes him different than that though. It’s the thing we know on the tip of our tongue, but you just can’t quite piece together the source of why we all love such a complicated person. In other words, Jordan was a questionable father, an teammate without much compassion, and overall not a model person. Yet, we all admire him and when he speaks you listen.
As I watched the documentary and grappled with this question of why we obsess over Michael Jordan more than any other athlete, I focused on those big moments where he always delivered. The reason no other athlete gets a 10-part documentary is because no other athlete plays a career that is so much like a movie. Each historic performance, triumph, rival, and tale like the “flu game” (or poison pizza game) creates our good guy in a superhero movie that we want him to be. Even if the actual guy may not be always a good guy. Jordan’s flaws made him endearing to fans, and his coldness made people love him more. Fans wanted his happiness the way a stereotypical privileged child seeks their distant father’s affirmation. Like that father, Jordan would occasionally creek open the door of humanity and make you believe that somewhere inside the cold, shiny, robotic exterior there was the person who met the unrealistic standard everyone held him to. That glimmer of the “perfect MJ” as we all pictured him made him the massive figure he was. It was also why when he disappointed fans off the court people felt betrayed, even though they knew who he was consistently going to be.
In this documentary the time where I saw the light to Jordan’s humanity shine the most was with the Bulls security staff. Jordan was a complicated person, a challenging teammate, and a strong personality. Yet, it was around team security that the “rip your heart out” or “cold-blooded killer” descriptions of Jordan on the court were not the person you saw. The security staff could have been just people Jordan dealt with and thought nothing of, but Jordan show that is not who he is. These stories of Jordan’s relationship showed that inside him there was a caring and compassionate person. The relationships Jordan had with the security staff were not just strong, they were the most important relationships in his life. He described Gus Lett as a “second father”, and if you know anything about Michael Jordan it is how much his father meant to him. When Jordan described his relationship with Lett that way, that is when my question was answered. We are fascinated with Jordan because no matter how flawed he is we do not want a perfect hero. We want a hero who shows us part of what we see in ourselves. We are not “good people” or “bad people” that fit into a box. We are all human and in Jordan we see all of us. He is someone who makes good choices and bad ones, and who sometimes feels profound emotion and then sometimes does not. Jordan is not cold like he appeared to us on the outside, he is cold sometimes, but shows compassion in a way where we believe in who he can be.
Unstated in our perception of Jordan is how it impacts people when Jordan fails to reach the human level we know he has. When he said “Republicans buy sneakers too”, it hurts all of us like a close friend insulted us. It’s because we have seen how he will fight for something he believes in, like Gus Lett, and we know he is making a choice that he knows falls short of our expectations. However, those failures in many people’s eyes almost keep us more attached to Jordan as if we as fans can change him. It is Jordan’s flaws, combined with his unique moments of brilliance and compassion all wrapped up in one of the most dominant athletes ever that make him one of the most fascinating public figures we have ever known.
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