The "The Last Dance" Thread

Fuck Ken Burns and his "not journalism" shit. Neither is repeating Al Stump's bullshit verbatim and treating it as fact.

I love "Baseball," but Burns takes so many factual liberties, it's laughable for him to accuse anyone else of not doing journalism.

 

It’s also not supposed to be journalism.

 

People around the Pistons called Isiah “Sybil.”
You never knew which Isiah you would get

 

The NRA.

 

Everyone talks about Jordan's competitive fire - still harboring beefs from 25 years ago, inviting a former teammate to his HOF induction just to rip him - why is he such a crummy owner? Where is that competitive fire? There are at least 10 owners with greater desire to win in the NBA than him. Ballmer, Cuban, Lacob and Gruber, Fertita, Gilbert (swallowing his pride to bring back LeBron? Huge), Holt the Spurs owner, even Radek of the Kings, Sarver of the Suns and Pera of the Grizzlies - though woefully misguided actually seem to WANT their teams to be better. and I guess I'll throw the Busses in there as well - though with that family/franchise - the players seem to come to you.

 

Being competitive and wanting to win don't mean much if you're shitty at your job. Jordan's godawful at the front office role and always has been. Same with some of the owners you mentioned. Yeah, Sarver wants to win. The Suns would be better off if he didn't care, because the more he meddles the worse off they are.

 

Oh I agree with the Sarvers, Radeks and Peras - but they at least seem focused. Jordan seems more interested in rehashing grievances from a generation ago than paying much attention to his own club. You would think he would be invested in making the Hornets decent - even in the crummy way the bad owners are doing it - than the disinterest he shows now.

 

He's pretty low-profile, but I'm not sure what anyone could reasonably expect right now. He's brought in a respected GM and coach. The team is mired in just-good-enough-to-pick-11th-every-year territory. The team and city are not attractive to free agents and playing for Jordan is probably more a negative than anything -- people remember Kwame Brown.

They need to be horrendous for a while to try to build picks, but that's not easy in the East -- they already stripped the team out to an anonymous collection of hobos this year and they still had seven teams with worse records.

 

If that is a true story, likely some sort of Middle East royal family stuff. Like bring the face of the Qatar World Cup.

 

Some of the same traits that made Jordan a great player - unable or unwilling to accept mediocre teammates or those that didn't work hard to him or stand up to him - would in turn make him an awful executive. Like, pretty much the worst thing you can do as an NBA GM is "win now" trades, and to prioritize "winners" and proven track records in college over projecting the player to improve. The Hornets have done a lot of both in his time there. Their draft record is especially bad for a team that's usually picking in the lottery. (Drafting Frank Kaminsky instead of trading the pick to the Celtics for four #1s, taking Adam Morrison, taking and then trading Tobias Harris and Gilgeous-Alexander, etc.)

 

Another thing about Jordan holding his grudges - it isn't like he was known as being the nicest guy or best teammate. Is what Thomas did to him any worse than what Jordan has done to other players?