Like tens of millions of people around the world, I’m watching and loving The Last Dance. The story of Michael Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls is one of realized potential amidst spectacular circumstances. For me, the viewing experience is so enriching because it not only puts basketball events of the ‘90s in a modern context, but also has me reaching back to my pre-teen and teenage years as an above-average Canadian basketball player who loved MJ and the Bulls. Do you know who didn’t know anything about the ‘90s Bulls and Michael Jordan? Kurt Heinrich. So, we decided to exchange questions and answers and get to the heart of the career, sport, community, and personal lessons from The Last Stand. Here are 10 career development questions about The Last Dance from someone who knows nothing about basketball.
Okay, there are, like, six ridiculous questions in the list because Kurt, like I said, knows so little about Michael Jordan, basketball and the NBA that so much of this story sparked his wonderful and ridiculous curiosity. Things get weird, folks.
10 Career Career Development Questions About The Last Dance
Was Dennis Rodman really that important to the Bulls and on a scale of 1-10 how crazy was he (during their championship run)?
Dennis Rodman is one of the greatest basketball playing humans to ever walk, or bound like a gazelle, across the earth. He was “painfully omitted” from Bleacher Report’s All-Time Player Rankings: NBA Top 50 and SLAM magazine ranked him number 59 all time. So, he was really, really, really good. An incredible athlete with an incredible basketball IQ and grit the likes of which few people possess.
Crazy scale? I would’ve said 7 until Ryen Russillo declared Rodman to be boring on the Bill Simmons podcast. So, maybe 4? It’s true that we’ve never really gotten to ‘the why’ underneath his behaviour.
Who would win in the following basketball game: a team of 1 Michael Jordan and a wooden post vs a team of 6 John Horns? (The John Horn team has 10 John Horn substitutes to be deployed throughout the game).
What year of Michael are we talking about here? Like, today’s Michael Jordan vs. 18-year-old Johns? And what score are we playing to? How tall and thick is this “post”? Indoor/outdoor? What are the conditions outs-
Let’s be serious. The Johns and I would be lucky to get three buckets.
What business decisions by the bulls in the earlier years ring most true and should be followed by the rest of us?
According to Organizational Psychologist Adam Grant, NBA teams with fewer superstars outperform “superteams”. The Chicago Bulls were an awesome team, but they only had two superstars (some folks even argue that Scottie Pippen was a really, really, really good role player).
Teams with 60% stars outperform those with 80% or more stars.
That’s the evidence from Wall Street analysts, World Cup soccer qualifying matches, and NBA basketball.#WorkLife: https://t.co/8iZVRt5Tng pic.twitter.com/83pWCWDirp— Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) March 14, 2018
As you build a team – whether it’s a youth soccer team or an organizational learning team – it might feel good to surround yourself with superstars and A+ talent. The strongest teams are diverse in culture, mindset and skills. What the Bulls got right is that they built a team that surrounded their superstar with role playing generalists (Pippen was really, really good at every part of basketball and Toni Kukoc was really good) and specialists (Rodman’s defense, Paxon and Kerr’s shooting).
On a scale of 1-20, how mean was Michael Jordan? Did that meanness help him win?
21. Like blackjack. Clearly it helped him win.
If you were giving one piece of direct feedback /constructive criticism to MJ what would you say and how would you say it?
I notice that your shoulders are often not square to the basket when you shoot jump shots; squaring them up will improve accuracy.
Jokes!
How I would give Michael Jordan feedback would be face-to-face across from each other in gorgeous white leather chairs while we sipped $1,800 a glass tequila. And I would tell him that he had an opportunity to take accountability for blocking Isaiah Thomas from the Dream Team (he said he did as much at the time). And then I’d ask what was behind the change in narrative?
What principles of negotiation can we learn from the bulls front office/GM/ownership?
I can think of two:
- By locking in Scottie Pippen for so little money allowed the Bulls to have two of the league’s best players on the same team for a decade, which produced championships throughout this finite period.
- The Bulls sucked before MJ and Pippen and have sucked (pretty much) since the team broke up in 1998; when negotiating we should always have what Simon Sinek calls the infinite game in mind.
Who would win in a no holds barred cage fight of Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman vs. Michael Jordan?
This is an important career development question. While the logical thing to do would be to pick the two superhumans against the one superhuman, but the thing is that no one really knows the limits of Michael Jordan’s competitiveness. I figure it would take MJ 23 minutes to win (I also think you just pitched ESPN on its next docu-series to get society through another few months with no sports).
Do you think Michael Jordan likes croissant?
No.
Do you think the Whitecaps are better than the Chicago Sting indoor soccer team of the 1980s?
The Whitecaps won the North America Super Soccer Cup in the ‘80s. The Whitecaps were way better!
Is it a big deal to win a NCAA championship?
Huge deal. It’s, I think, a top 5 sports trophy in American sports. It also supports MJ’s GOAT (Greatest of All Time) narrative because it demonstrates his legacy of winning.
John, how does it feel when the ball goes through the net?
So good, man. Especially when a guy has a hand in your face or when it’s in another team’s gym. It feels like progress and little bits of victory.
How do you feel about Barack Obama’s descriptor being “former Chicago resident” in Episode I?
Pretty great. It really sums up his career and story.