By ARIEL GONZALEZ
Staff Writer
Are you excited yet? The highly anticipated sports documentary “The Last Dance” premiered Sunday night, and fans were glued to their TVs. Sunday’s first episode solidified two things to many basketball fans: Michael Jordan would do anything to win and the only man standing between him and an insurmountable level of success was General Manager Jerry Krause. Part two of Sunday’s premiere made certain of two more things: Scottie Pippen was the ultimate unsung hero and turmoil always brewed in heaven.
The cloud of uncertainty hovering around the five-time world champions in 1997 was unprecedented, the Bulls had repeated as champions and had just won their fifth title in seven years. However, after the Bulls fifth championship season in 1997, Krause and head coach Phil Jackson were at odds. Luckily for Jackson, Krause was not the owner, and Jerry Reinsdorf, who owned the Bulls, granted Jackson an opportunity to coach his team for a sixth championship in eight years.
As a scout Krause indeed deserved his merits, he brought in Jackson as an assistant coach, and Krause then promoted Jackson to head coach in 1990. Krause also acquired key pieces time and time again including Pippen on draft night in 1987. However, controlling one’s ego can be tough in moments when others are getting more adulation than yourself and it showed. Krause wanted to build a championship team without the likes of Jordan, Pippen, and Jackson, and a complete overhaul was in store by 1998 and everyone knew it.
“Jerry called me in his office and said, this is going to be your last year, I don’t care if you win 82 games in a row,” said Jackson.
More than anything, we learned Jordan loved to compete and play basketball. As a young boy, Jordan’s competitiveness grew from a place of raw emotions. Jordan wanted to grasp his father’s attention so badly that he would go to any extreme to get there and that included fighting through Larry Jordan. Larry, Jordan’s older brother, is vastly responsible for Jordan’s killer will and sheer determination because the older brother was the better basketball player for many years. However, the younger Jordan was determined on being his dad’s spotlight, so he worked tirelessly to be better than his brother.
As a young adolescent, Jordan quickly established himself as a great high school player and then a great collegiate player at the University of North Carolina. Like every freshman, Jordan had his ups and downs including running up his phone bill; however, what was different about Jordan was the fact that he was willing to do more than anyone.
“I’m gonna show you, nobody will ever work as hard as me,” said Jordan to then Assistant Coach Roy Williams. The 1982 NCAA championship game was the inception of the Jordan legacy, as the game winded down, the North Carolina Tar Heels were down a point to Georgetown University. By design, Jordan was not the focal point of the team’s last play but if given the opportunity Jordan was given the green light to deliver and he did. From that moment on, Jordan was never the same.
“That turned my name from Mike to Michael Jordan,” said Jordan.
The focus shifts mainly to Pippen during the second episode and the narrative of the unsung hero becomes more prevalent than ever. Pippen was infamously underpaid after being drafted in 1987 when he signed a seven-year $18 million contract in 1991. At the time, Pippen wanted to provide for his family which we learned was struggling in Hamburg, Ark. Fast-forward to the beginning of the 1997-1998 season, Pippen elected to have surgery late in an effort to force management to restructure his deal, something that was never on the table. Pippen is often looked at as Robin to Jordan’s Batman, but few fail to realize just how good Pippen was. In a graphic shown early in the episode, Pippen is ranked either second to Jordan or first in most statistical categories, however he ranked sixth in salary on his own team and 122nd in the whole league.
We also get to observe some of the genesis of Jordan’s issues with management. Following a rookie campaign in which Jordan was the recipient of the NBA’s Rookie of the Year, Jordan broke his foot during his sophomore season and missed most of the season. When he came back later that year, Jordan was placed on a minute restriction: something he resented because he believed the team wanted to lose games purposely in order to receive a higher draft pick. In a pivotal game against the Indiana Pacers, Jordan who was only allowed to play 14 minutes a game, was pulled out of the game with 31 seconds in the game and with the Bulls down a basket. Luckily, teammate John Paxson delivered with a game winning shot but that brought about consequences as Jordan’s relationship with management was never the same.
“The mistrust Michael had with management, specifically with Jerry Krause, was he believed that they violated the most fundamental aspect of sport, of I would argue the most fundamental way Michael conducted his life. You do it at the highest level, and you do it all the time,” said Mark Vancil, author of Rare Air.
A team so dominant with athletes who were on top of the world seemed to always have cast upon them a cloud of uncertainty. Whether it was early in Jordan’s career or later on during the Last Dance season of 1998, the Bulls organization seemed to never get out of their own way and let Jordan, Pippen, and Jackson blossom until they couldn’t any longer. Winning could not keep the glue together much longer and as we move forward in “The Last Dance” it will become evident to fans that Krause wanted one thing: credit for building a winning franchise. However, Krause forgot the one basic element while seeking credit, and that’s that his sustained excellence as general manager was not due to him alone.