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I have just finished watching The Last Dance and can comfortably say it’s the best sports documentary I’ve ever watched. This is my major takeaway from the documentary. These are just my thoughts based in the documentary so I’m open to conversation and other opinions! Love to hear your thoughts.
High performing teams usually have players, coaches and head office all on the same page. This was not the case with the so-called “power players” Jordan and Pippen having a poor relationship with GM Jerry Krause and owner Jerry Reinsdorf. Coach Phil Jackson the coach also appeared to have a poor relationship with the front office.
With this disconnect and lack of trust between the coaching staff and the players from the front office is unusual in high performing sports teams. The players seemed to use this as a motivator however, suggesting this lack of trust was in fact a benefit.
On a coach-athlete level, Jackson placed a lot of trust in his players. He empowered his players to take responsibility and trusted them to make decisions as shown by “The Shot” by Jordan in Game 6 of the 1998 finals when he didn’t call a time-out and allowed Jordan to make a play.
Jackson appeared to entrust Jordan with the responsibility of driving the team. He used Jordan as the ultimate “energiser”. Jackson created the environment for the team and the direction for them and he seemed to let Jordan pull the team with him.
Jackson’s player trust was highlighted with Dennis Rodman. He allowed Rodman to blow off steam at various points during the season, understanding Rodman’s human needs, as opposed to viewing him solely as a basketball player. Even in the 1998 Finals when Rodman missed practise to appear on WCW without permission from Jackson. However he was accepted back with a continued belief he would still perform as the dominant defender he had proven.
Bar Pippen and Rodman, Jordan appeared to have trouble trusting his teammates' skills. This was something Jackson worked on when he first arrived in 1991.
Jordan’s open criticism of players at times would make it difficult to think players trusted him because he cared for them, but perhaps they saw him as being honest in his desire for them to improve. His level of performance and consistency would also have given him the trust of his team mates on a technical level at least.
However, Jordan began trusting his teammates perhaps through unorthodox methods, e.g. fighting Steve Kerr. This trust was shown by giving the ball up to Steve Kerr for the game winner in the 1997 Finals.
It seems Jackson focused on building the social cohesion and Jordan was allowed to drive task cohesion. Jackson focused on the team and tried to build the relationships between the players and himself and amongst the players.
Jordan focused on the goal and how he could achieve the goal along with the other players. Whilst Jordan’s methods to achieve this were questionable, Jackson understood that Jordan could undertake this role e.g. he didn’t feel the need to be liked, so Jackson was able to give Jordan this level of autonomy.
It’s also possible that Jackson felt he couldn’t treat Jordan as “another player” as you could say he was bigger than the Chicago Bulls at this stage and Jackson realised this and worked around this and gave him a lot of control.
Overall the mutual trust between Jackson and Jordan was a key factor in the Chicago Bulls run. This overcame the lack of trust between Jackson and the players and the front office. Their trust allowed other relationships to be built, seemingly built on what you could call dysfunctional trust such as between Rodman and Jackson, Jackson and the rest of the team, the mutual trust between Jordan and Pippen and the confrontational trust between Jordan and the role players.
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