The Last Dance

ISSUE #106

Michael Jordan is the concept of celebrity writ large, a name we're demanded to reckon with whether we know shit about him or not. He was first to mutate from person to brand, foretelling the rise of our culture of influencers. His sheer talent still eclipses masters of other fields — we compare every young player to Mike, while young bands stopped reckoning with The Beatles years ago.

Like most of America, I just finished The Last Dance, the ten-part docuseries on the Bulls of the 90s (this playlist clones its soundtrack, all golden-era hip hop). How fun it must've been to watch those games in real time, seeing magic like clockwork for the better part of a decade. This basking in nostalgia was the great joy of The Last Dance — all videotaped proof that miracles do exist.

One question lingers, though: do we like Michael Jordan? Some will say, "Of course, he was the greatest athlete of all time." Others: "He was a merciless ass who put his teammates through hell." We dismiss his megalomania or attribute his success to it. I personally find the question a little irrelevant. Do I like Michael Jordan? Did ancient Greeks like Zeus? It didn't matter much; he ran shit either way.

My parents were super-fans — makes sense for two twenty-somethings settling down in Aurora, IL — so for me he was just an elemental part of our world, embedded as DNA, unquestionable as Elmo. I was named after him, in a tortuous sense: he's Michael Jeffrey, while I'm Jeffrey Michael. There was that spotted Bulls wallpaper in my basement, their repeated logos the size of snickerdoodles set into a crazed yellow. My mom put it up herself; when she reminded me a few weeks ago, she could help but say, "Why did I do that?" It's hard to imagine her falling victim to the fervor of fandom, but everybody did — a new God had fallen to Earth.