One of my first, and most indelible, memories of the NBA is watching Michael Jordan weep while holding the NBA Championship trophy after his Chicago Bulls beat the Seattle SuperSonics in the 1996 NBA Finals.
He had been away from the game of basketball, as he prefers to call it, for two seasons after his father was murdered in North Carolina. The title was his first without his father by his side.
In 50 minutes, director Ron Shelton put together an impressive explanation of why Jordan walked away from basketball and into a minor league baseball team in Birmingham, Ala., in the mid-‘90s. The next installment of ESPN’s “30-for-30” film series, Jordan Rides the Bus, airs Tuesday on ESPN at 8 p.m.
Shelton, who put together the best sports movie of all time in “Bull Durham,” was called upon by ESPN to do a film in its critically acclaimed series.
His interpretation of Jordan’s motives behind leaving basketball and going after a spot on a Major League roster is one shared by many — Jordan, having won every accolade basketball offered, left the game at the prime of his career because he wanted a new challenge after the death of his father. But Shelton also debunks many theories surrounding Jordan’s departure that have found their way to public opinion.
Did Jordan leave because of his gambling problem? Did NBA commissioner David Stern push Jordan out? Was Jordan’s father killed because of his son’s gambling debt? Was Jordan any good at baseball?
The film answers all of these with the help of a wide array of interviews. Shelton presents stories from a local fisherman in South Carolina, a real estate agent in Alabama and a childhood friend in North Carolina. He also gets surprise quotes from Phil Jackson, Jordan’s coach from 1989 to 1998, and Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Bulls and Chicago White Sox.
Shelton lacks an interview with Jordan, but makes up for it by using tapes from previous sit-downs with His Airness (he borrows from Ed Bradley’s 60 Minutes interview). He also uses a fuzzy picture of a tall, skinny black man wearing a Birmingham Barons’ No. 45 jersey for some isolated shots in the locker room, dugout and outfield.
When Shelton presents how Jordan batted under the Mendoza line during his first season in the minors, it felt like I was struggling to go 2-for-10 as well. His poor stance, his high choppers off home plate and awkwardness rounding bases makes you forget about his graceful, pressure-packed shot against Georgetown in 1982, the shot over Elho and his six three-pointers against the Trail Blazers.
Jordan was no longer God disguised as Michael Jordan. Shelton made you go 0-for-3 with two strikeouts while watching Jordan’s first season in Birmingham.
But the film fails to convince that Jordan was actually going to make it to the majors. For all the votes of confidence that Jordan’s progress received in the film, it takes more than Reinsdorf saying he would have made it to the Majors to believe it.
They use the 1994 MLB strike as a main reason Jordan left baseball, but even Terry Francona says Jordan would sit in the locker room and remark on his former Bulls. Listening to even a snip of his Naismith Hall of Fame induction speech would be enough to know that Jordan’s competitive nature couldn’t keep him away from dunking over Patrick Ewing one more time.
Shelton may not prove that Jordan would have succeeded with the White Sox, but he sufficiently answers why he left the game. For as distant as Jordan is — Shelton couldn’t get an interview with him for the documentary — you could feel how difficult the loss of his father was on the greatest basketball player of all time.
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