Michael Jordan and being the Greatest Of All Time
Greatest Of All Time
The Last Dance could not have come at a better time. (Thank you for accelerating the release, ESPN). There are no live sports. Entertainment options are limited. And, here, we have a deep dive into one of the most famous people on the planet and the greatest basketball player of all time.
Jordan's rookie season was the year before I was born, so you could say we grew up together. By the time you get to the Last Dance (1997-1998), I would have been in middle school in Minnesota. And I hadn't thought much about Michael Jordan since then. There are so many observations, thoughts, and feelings to have about the ~10 hours that I've spent watching the series.
What does it mean to be the greatest of all time? What does it take to perform at that level? How does an individual become the best in the world in a team sport? How is the personal competitive drive for greatness reconciled with how you treat others? What part of MJ's greatness, and anyone's greatness, is personal? Is there a link between Michael Jordan’s greatness and being seen as jerk?
My observations from The Last Dance:
These games are high-stakes, intense, and emotional. And no one gets it right 100% of the time. He’s also young. The younger you are, the more likely you are to compete like this. I don’t think that’s bad. Think it comes from the heart. That’s why coaches and parents matter.
Speaking of parents. Watching MJ squirm on the floor and sob into a basketball at the end of Episode 8 felt almost too intimate to watch. It's humanizing and showed how much his dad meant to him. Throughout the series, you get a sense of all that MJ's parents did to encourage and help him. Greatness has help. Competitive people need emotional help. You need to perform, but you are managing emotions as well; your family, the people you trust the most, are critical to that. MJ's parents helped him achieve greatness over a long time and challenged him at the right moments. Nike and the Jordan brand wouldn't have happened without his mom.
Greatness starts small. Greatness starts in struggle.
The rules of money are the most powerful. I didn't find the evidence that Jordan had a gambling problem that compelling. Yet what was convincing was a journalist's explanation of why Jordan's retirement after the 1994 finals was not a concealed suspension; the monetary incentives of the NBA owners, and former commissioner David Stern, would not see them discard their golden goose on their own accord.
Michael issued that apology to Steve Kerr. Scottie Pippen had to issue an apology to the team. Everyone is human and crosses a line they don't mean to cross.
It's always personal. That's a theme of this newsletter and my observation of life.
And on that theme: It’s Always Personal
I highly recommend this ESPN deep dive into Michael Jordan and the Jordan family history. In it includes stories ranging from of giving away his shoes after that epic game when he had food poisoning (known as the "flu game" before this series) to the history of the black community in Wilmington, North Carolina. A few quotes:
Dreams and deeds. Integrity and work. Deloris and James Jordan created an America they wanted in the lessons they taught their five children.
Who did all these kids of every race and class want to be like? "That was a significant transformation," says Imani Perry, a professor at Princeton and one of America's leading thinkers on race, "to have the entire nation say they want to be like a black man from rural North Carolina."
Keeping your head down and your thoughts to yourself, working hard, never trusting, never easing up even for a moment. It was a choice. Michael Jordan was born into a world of predators, and into a line of survivors, and he studied on how to win. That's the real wonder of him up close.
So, the New York Times comes out with an article
And it’s titled "Michael Jordan: N.B.A. Champ, Marketing Legend and ... Toxic worker?" with 'experts' who say a difficult superstar is rarely worth the cost to the workplace morale. Does the Bulls icon prove them wrong?'
This is a lesson in media literacy and judgment more than it answering any question regarding Michael Jordan.
First, you'd have to determine if Michael Jordan was 'a difficult superstar'. How are we defining difficult here?
Second, was he more difficult than Denis Rodman? Was he more of an asshole than the entire Detroit Pistons team that threw their opponents to the ground? In The Last Dance, it's hard to watch and not think that the asshole was Jerry Krause, the general manager. He succeeded will the Bulls, at first, in spite of himself. How'd that rebuilding period go? Not so good.
Third, what did the Times use as their analogy for proving the destructive power of 'brilliant jerks'? A 1970s study of Sears employees in Chicago, another featuring a manufacturing plant that issued pay cuts where the executive was terse when delivering the news. Are you serious? You are comparing Michael Jordan's performance with the Bulls and Sears store employees in the 1970s?
The deeper research by Professor Button that they cite may be better, but I'm not convinced that in practice filtering out 'assholes' works, and I am weary. Without context on the contest at play, it's tough to say.
I'm not in support of jerk behavior. But we can't conflate behaviors that accompany striving for excellence and the drive to compete and win with being an 'asshole'.
I would draw the line on 'asshole'. Where? Someone who breaks the rules. Who cheats. Who is a 'bullying' without regard to performance. Or a leader who allows and responsible for an atmosphere of bullying, particularly regarding issues of personal identity like race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, etc. Michael Jordan wasn't the coach. He did not have direct reports. He had an individual contributor legal contract. He also didn't seem to have issues of singling individuals out for acts of aggression based on their identity characteristics.
Side note? In my experience, whatever an organization says they have ‘a no asshole’ policy, they usually have a lot of assholes or a set of incentives that encourages and rewards 'asshole' behavior. That’s why they have the policy. Otherwise, they’d say 'we work as a team', 'treat each other with respect', 'support contrarian voices’, 'believe in diversity' etc. If they say that they have 'a no asshole' policy, run for the hills.
DS community member, Paul Arnold of Switch Ventures, has a nice quote at the end of the article. In the context of venture it makes sense because an entrepreneur is going to have to hire and manage a team of people to work for him or her:
“If it’s really the Michael Jordan of entrepreneurs,” said Paul Arnold, founder of a venture capital fund called Switch Ventures, “I’ll probably go with Michael Jordan.”
But given the near impossibility of determining this ahead of time, Mr. Arnold said, “When I realize a person is an asshole, I’ve walked away.”
My final observation on the 'brilliant jerk'.
I've often seen this excuse leveled by those who are mediocre against those who pursue and achieve greatness in their work. Maybe they don't want to put in the work. Maybe they don't want to compete. That's fine. But that's a choice.
I'm re-posting this article on Georgia O’Keefe and her sister Ida. I’ve long admired Georgia O’Keefe. Born in a farmhouse in Wisconsin, she made her own clothes and suffered complete betrayal by her husband. This compares the work-ethic and mindset of Georgia vs her sister Ida, who also painted but never gained fame.
(On Georgia) In fact, it was while in the hinterlands that she had made some of her most original work. She was never painting for local art shows but for the New York world of the avant-garde. The difference between the sisters was not one of circumstance but of essence. Stieglitz gave Georgia her start, but it was the work that made her successful. Her original, heartfelt, hard-won images overwhelmed many viewers. She was dedicated to the expression of her singular ideas, and to her formidable work ethic. Throughout her long career, Georgia rarely faltered in her dedication.
Who can say? Ida might have been successful if she’d been her own true supporter, as Georgia had been. An artist can only rely on herself; the world may disregard her. She can never afford to lose her focus on the goal.