The NBA star's life and legacy will be explored in ESPN's 10-part docuseries, premiering April 19.
Michael Jordan has some concerns about what people might think of him after seeing his upcoming docuseries, The Last Dance.
The 10-part ESPN show documents the NBA legend's final season with the Chicago Bulls from 1997 to1998, as well as his early life and emergence as a phenomenon in the NBA. Director Jason Hehir opened up about Jordan's thoughts on the docuseries in an interview with The Athletic.
"When people see this footage I'm not sure they're going to be able to understand why I was so intense, why I did the things I did, why I acted the way I acted, and why I said the things I said," Hehir recalls Jordan telling him.
"When you see the footage of [me riding with Scott Burrell], you're going to think that I'm a horrible guy," Hehir says Jordan told him. "But you have to realize that the reason why I was treating him like that is because I needed him to be tough in the playoffs and we're facing the Indiana's and Miami's and New York's in the Eastern Conference. He needed to be tough and I needed to know that I could count on him. And those are the kind of things where people see me acting the way I acted in practice, they're not going to understand it."
Intense or tough, Jordan is considered the greatest basketball player of all time, and his record shows it. He's won six championships and six final MVP Awards, as well as five MVP Awards over the span of his 15-season career. Fans will get an inside look at how the athlete made history and became the G.O.A.T.
"Look, winning has a price,” Jordan says in the documentary, per the outlet. “And leadership has a price. So I pulled people along when they didn’t want to be pulled. I challenged people when they didn’t want to be challenged. And I earned that right because my teammates who came after me didn’t endure all the things that I endured. Once you joined the team, you lived at a certain standard that I played the game. And I wasn’t going to take any less.
"Now, if that means I had to go in there and get in your a** a little bit, then I did that," he continues. "You ask all my teammates. The one thing about Michael Jordan was he never asked me to do something that he didn’t f**king do."
The first two hour-long episodes will premiere Sunday, April 19 at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN.
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