Michael Jordan has been a very elusive figure over the last few years. Ever since his NBA career came to an end, Jordan has made a big effort to try and stay away from the public eye. He rarely does any interviews and hasn’t made a lot of public appearances. It seems as though Jordan saw how over-involved the media was in his life, and always kept asking him intrusive questions. So now that he doesn’t have media obligations as an NBA player, Jordan has kept a safe distance from most people in the media. Any major communication that he has to make with the media, he does through his agent and puts out press releases.
So it was a shock to most fans when Jordan sat down with ABC Australia to talk about Luc Longley for a docuseries about the Australian center. Longley and Jordan played together during Jordan’s second stint with the Chicago Bulls. Longley wasn’t featured at all in the 2020 docuseries ‘The Last Dance’, so it is absolutely fair that he is getting his own docuseries that focuses on his career.
Jordan discussed a lot of subjects during his interview. He mentioned his return to the Chicago Bulls after two years, coming out of retirement to play again. But the Bulls he returned to was very different. He spoke about his first experience with Luc Longley, and how Longley’s approach to the game was very different from his own, and their dynamic together. Jordan did discuss why Longley was omitted from The Last Dance, noting that he regretted Longley’s omission.
Jordan, toward the end of the interview, was asked why he sat down for such a long interview. Jordan mentioned that Longley was important to him, and he believes that his story was too important not to be told. Jordan also mentioned that Longley helped him grow as a person and a player, and he holds a lot of respect and admiration for the Australian big man.
“He matters to me. He does matter to me and his story needs to be told. And I’m pretty sure I can enlighten it from my perspective and, you know, give him, give people his meaningfulness to me, you know, as a teammate as a competitor. I mean there’s some good and some bad, but that’s all a part of life. You’re going to have friends that you have good and bad things about. But we went through the trenches. We shared a lot, we competed together. And, I would take him any day of the week. If I had to go to a competition again. If you asked me to do it all over again, there is no way I would leave Luc Longley off my team. No way possible. Because he mattered. He had an impact on me. He helped me change as a person. To hear that they’re recognizing him and you would think, most people think, what can they be saying about Luc in a documentary? You can be saying a lot about the guy. I’m an example of what he meant to me and how he made me better as a player, as a person.”
Jordan also shared a very embarrassing story about Luc Longley from the 1998 NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz. The story is not only a good window into how the Finals went for the Bulls, but also how Jordan would react to his teammates, both positively and negatively. Jordan sitting down for this interview shows how much respect he has for Longley, something very few players in the NBA can say when it comes to ‘His Airness’.
