We haven’t watched the entire ten episodes of ‘The Last Dance’ that have saved ESPN’s bacon, been a godsend for its advertisers, and delivered an unexpected bonanza to sports junkies thirsting for something fresher and more domestic than last century’s NBA all-star games or South Korean baseball.
In sports, as in life and broadcasting, chance favors the prepared. So some folk at the network are likely getting bonuses for having the ten episodes ready to run when the NBA season and playoffs were halted, and major league baseball delayed.
Ex-Plain Dealer sportswriter Branson Wright, already into the next phase of his career as a filmmaker, reached into his network of local sports figures this month to produce some interesting programming on the Last Dance of the Bulls and the Final Dance of a titanic community figure, Leonard Jackson, who died April 30.
Almost ten minutes focused on an unforgettable six seconds
Warrensville Heights mayor Brad Sellers was a standout area high school basketball player who went on to star at Ohio State University and become a professional basketball player. He joined Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in 1982 as their first round draft choice, the ninth overall pick that year. Seven feet tall but weighing only 210 pounds, Sellers is listed by basketball-reference.com as both a power forward and a small forward.
Sellers played three years with Jordan — fellow Clevelander Charles Oakley was a teammate for the first two — before moving on to play for other teams in a six-year NBA career that eventually took him overseas to play for teams in France, Greece, Israel, and Spain. He knew Jordan as both teammate and opponent.
While his comments about Jordan are interesting, they are mostly politic, which is to say non-controversial and not especially insightful. But it’s the last third of nearly 30 minute chat that sparkles. And that almost ten minutes is focused on an unforgettable six or so seconds.
As any Clevelander of a certain age knows, those twelve seconds were the last moments of the winner-take-all Game 5 of the playoff series between the Cavaliers and the Bulls. The game was May 7, 1989 at the old Richfield Coliseum and Sellers talks about it as if it were last week.
For the disappointed 21,000-plus fans in attendance that day — I was one of them — we had no idea history was being made. Sellers, who inbounded the ball to Jordan for the most important assist of his life, lets us inside his head, the huddle and the play in a remarkably captivating manner.
It was the moment, he says, “where the folklore became real”. You can watch the video interview here.
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Wright also does his bit to memorialize history by gathering three Cleveland sports figures to talk about former Cleveland Schools athletic commissioner Leonard Jackson. Coach Ted Ginn Sr. and former scholastic stars Pierre Woods [Glenville HS, University of Michigan, New England Patriots] and Barb Turner [East Tech HS, 2002 state champs; UConn, 2003, 2004 national champs, and member, Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame]. The video, with all parties sheltered in place, reminds us of how important caring adults are to the development of young people.
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