Mon, May 4th, 2020

Retirement No. 1 — John Michael Wozniak — The Shrug

May 04, 2020

Monday, May 4th, 2020

  The Opening Tip

  • Looking at Michael Jordan’s first retirement ahead of next week’s episodes 

  • An ode to the unsung hero of last night’s “The Last Dance” airing

  • The Shrug

  • Other thoughts on “The Last Dance”

1. The Lead: Would Michael Jordan have retired if he wasn’t so definitively better than everyone else?   

Episodes five and six last night of “The Last Dance” covered a lot -- Michael Jordan’s faux philanthropy, his prolific gambling, his overwhelming fame in 1998, the Dream Team, etc. -- but the basic point of the two hours was to set the scene for his first retirement from basketball, in 1993, which episodes seven and eight will cover.(Conspiracy theories abound that his first retirement came because of gambling. Because “The Last Dance” was produced with Jordan’s final word in mind, we likely won’t hear any of that.)Jordan retired in October, 1993. In his press conference, he insisted it was because he was, in essence, bored: 

“I’ve always stressed to the people who have known me, to the media that have followed me, that when I lose the sense of motivation and the sense to prove something as a basketball player, it’s time for me to move away from the game of basketball.”

His father, James Jordan, was murdered in July, 1993. He also emphasized during that press conference that he would have retired even if he had still been around: 

“It was a decision that I was contemplating about when the season ended. So, naturally, when my father died, it put a little bit different emphasis on life in general, but it didn’t alter my decision no differently than what I had already leaned towards.”

If Jordan truly was tired of wrecking the league, it would be somewhat understandable. From 1991-93, during his first three-peat, he and the Bulls, in the playoffs, beat: 

  • Patrick Ewing’s Knicks (x3)

  • Isiah Thomas’ Pistons 

  • Magic Johnson’s Lakers

  • The Cavaliers (x2)

  • Charles Barkley’s 76ers

  • Clyde Drexler’s Trail Blazers

  • Barkley’s Suns 

The only reason he hadn’t beaten John Stockton and Karl Malone and Gary Payton was geography. And he must not have seen the Rockets -- who won the next two titles -- coming.Jordan -- unlike LeBron, who had the Pistons, the Celtics, the Spurs and the Warriors as successive adversaries -- was out of worthy foes. No one could stop him, except ...

 2. Here is the only man who could beat Michael Jordan 

Last night, the world was introduced to this United Center security guard, who beat Jordan in a game (the rules appeared to be -- try and throw a quarter as close as you can to the wall without it touching the wall) with a $20 bet on the line. His reaction to beating Jordan was to break out his own rendition of The Shrug (more on that next section), which he abso-fucking-lutely nailed.The guy, John Michael Wozniak, was apparently an off-duty narcotics police officer, who passed away earlier this year due to colon cancer at 69.He worked as Jordan’s bodyguard when Jordan moved to Birmingham, Al. to play baseball, according to an Athletic article, and did security for him for the ensuing two decades.According to the same article, Wozniak’s son, Nicholi, texted Jordan last night when his father’s fame was taking off on Twitter. Jordan texted back telling Nicholi “his father would be in his heart.” Rest in peace to a legend who, along with Penny and Shaq’s Magic, was the last person to beat MJ as a Bull.Read the full Athletic article here. It’s really good.

3. The Grip asks (rhetoric question edition): How god damn cool was this?    

The real Shrug happened in Game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals. The prologue leading up to that series was that Portland’s Clyde Drexler was just as good a basketball player as Jordan, if without the flair and marketing.Jordan disagreed, and responded by hitting six 3s and scoring 35 points in the Finals’ first half.We’ve become desensitized to 3s, but that really was a miracle back then: 

  • In 1991-92, regular and postseason, Jordan's high for made 3s was three. He doubled that in one Finals half. 

  • That season, he didn’t make a 3-pointer in 60 of 80 regular season games. He didn’t even attempt a 3 in his first five playoff games in '92.

  • His career-high was seven, done in overtime in 1990, when he dropped 69 against Cleveland. (He finished his Shrug game with 39 points, hardly playing in the second half.)

4. More fragmented thoughts on “The Last Dance" 

  • The footage of the 1998 All-Star Game, where the East team is in its locker room talking about Kobe (“The little Laker boy”) was fascinating. More of that please. 

  • In general, it’s good to deal with Jordan’s backstory to provide context to the 1997-98 season, but TLD would only be better served to show as much of the never-before-seen footage as possible.  

  • The part where it showed Jordan being chauffeured through his day -- from hotel, to practice, to game, back to hotel -- all the while being swarmed by crowds every time he stepped into the real world, was suffocating.  

  • Why the hell was Justin Timberlake involved? 

  • There was a scene last night that showed Buggin’ Out from Do The Right Thing. The fact that Buggin’ Out is also Gus Fring will never compute. 

  • This has been lost to history, but, in the 1993 NBA Finals, if John Paxson missed that 3-pointer with five seconds left in Game 6, Barkley and the Suns would have had a Game 7 at home to beat the Bulls. One of the most important shots in NBA history. 

  • It was nice to see and hear from Toni Kukoč (or Kucock, as many Americans liked to say), who was strangely missing from the first four episodes.

5.  Off the press

  • Did Michael Jordan really say 'Republicans buy sneakers, too'? The history behind the infamous quote [The Sporting News]

  • There were a few bumps in the road between me and Larry Bird [The Boston Globe]