Editing the latest episode of Cinematic Underdogs, and thus listening to the debate between @Blob Cat and I about Michael Jordan’s present-day emotional wellbeing, I kept wanting one of us to mention various elements that remained simmering beneath the surface. This is usual when editing podcasts—the discrepancy between what you aspired to say, and what you actually said, can be tauntingly striking.

To be specific, for a good part of the episode we fixate on the opening / final shot of the entire ten-part series The Last Dance: a shot of Michael Jordan staring out a crystal-clear, full-sized window inside a mansion. In it, the space around him feels cold and expansive. He, in context, looks forlorn and lugubrious, and…

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I normally only do series/shows on YouTube, but I wanted to hit on this via Letterboxd. Jordan has always been my favorite player, but I can’t claim to be the guy that “witnessed the greatness,” because I wasn’t born until 1995. I caught the main end of his career, and I had to reflect through footage of his games. I didn’t know half of the “off-the-court” drama that he went through, and I was so pumped to see it all fleshed out in this documentary. I was thrilled to see how in-depth it got. Now, it is a reasonable thought to assume it is a one-sided documentary. Maybe they didn’t hit on Michael’s bad games…

Some of my earliest memories of enjoying watching sports were when my dad and I rooted for MJ, Pippen, and Rodman to win those last three championships.

"Winning has a price , and leadership has a price ... So, I pulled people along when they didn't wanna be pulled ... Once you join the team, you live at a certain standard that I play the game and I wasn't gonna take anything less ... You ask all my teammates? The one thing about Michael Jordan was he never asked me to do something that he didn't fucking do."

As a kid, I did have both a Rodman Bulls jersey and a MJ Toon Squad one.

I loved getting this behind…

A fantastic documentary series in ten parts about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, perhaps the greatest basketball team in history, certainly one of the best in American history. The main "thread" of the documentary is behind the scenes footage of the team going into what was believed to be their final season in 1998, while fighting for a sixth and final championship trophy with Michael Jordan, but also looking back in time at the players, coaches and how they came to join the team and build their success, so there's a kind of "weave" of two plotlines in time finally joining together at the very end.

I think the less you know about basketball, the more you're likely to…

I finally finished The Last Dance, and honestly it is a pretty good replacement for not having any basketball to watch. I didn’t know that much about the details of Jordan’s career (other than Space Jam, of course), and so it was an interesting watch. However, I do have a few thoughts.

1. This documentary is very clearly devoted to preserving the image of Michael Jordan that he likes to present, and so it keeps its focus tightly on him even when the story would actually be more interesting away from his narrative. Also, Jordan’s not the most compelling interview subject. He doesn’t offer much in the terms of insight.

2. Dennis Rodman might be the most interesting person interviewed…