My first post on Medium: The Last Dance & the Power of Memory

Michael Jordan never struck me as the nostalgic type.

Let’s be real: A man who asks his grandchild to call him “Michael” isn’t wistfully spinning a yarn about the way back when. For Jordan, the superstar, the past wasn’t meant to be sentimentalized. If anything, memories that lingered - getting snubbed for the postgame handshake, being ignored in a restaurant - were for one purpose only: fanning the flames of competition.

Nor is “The Last Dance” an indication he’s changed and is now taking a rosy-colored look back. Competition may have convinced MJ to participate in the first place, green-lighting his participation on the same day that the Cleveland Cavaliers held their 2016 championship parade. The documentary would be slated to debut several years later, and little did anyone know what the world would be going through in 2020.

And just like that - up went the curtain on the best-timed documentary of our lifetimes.

Life in these United States, and in a city like Chicago which is still under a stay at home order, has been like existing in a veritable twilight zone, where very little is as it was before, and even less is known of what it might be like after. Where an errant cough would’ve been dismissed out of hand two months ago, and not anxiously followed up with a quick check on one’s sense of smell. My coffee smells like… coffee. Phew.

But every Sunday, we are transported away.

The anxiety and tedium of the prior six days evaporates as viewers are taken to a place where high fives are allowed and crowds still roar and cameras and microphones press on the best player in the world as he walks through the United Center. Where it only takes the first few notes of his 1992 Gatorade commercial… Sometimes I dream…that he is me… to instantly teleport us right back to the 90s.

As a Chicagoan, I indulge in not what could’ve been (sorry Knicks fans) but what most definitively was, the dynasty years of a Bulls era that became its own illustrious chapter of NBA history, one that endured for the better part of a decade. Even the controversies that characterized that era - can we even call them that now? The scandals that seemed so incendiary in 1997 - Dennis Rodman went on a mid-season vacation? What was Jerry Krause thinking? - seem quaint, even comforting, viewed from the infinitely more bizarre vantage point of 2020.

Nostalgia has its roots in two Greek words, home and pain. The ache of remembering what once was. To those who lived the experience the first time, there’s a part of us that will always feel like we’re right back there when we hear “From North Carolina…at guard…. 6’6"…Michael Jordan!” or when we see Jordan’s mid-air switch from the right hand to the left on a ridiculously acrobatic layup or Steve Kerr sinking the jumper that clinched a championship. Those are all wonderful and welcome memories, well worth revisiting.

Psychologists say it’s these happy memories that an help anchor us when we are buffeted by fear and anxiety. For that, I am thankful for this series, for this personal time machine for a few of us who were fortunate enough to see Jordan play in the 90s— and for those of us seeing it anew. Our collective anxiety is replaced, for at least a couple hours, by anticipation and excitement for a weekly journey through the wormhole of time to another, more joyful dimension.

I’m going to savor these last two episodes. After all, as Jordan said himself, “It’s the 90s.”

https://medium.com/@michelesteele/a-cure-for-what-ails-us-the-last-dance-and-the-power-of-memory-f57f5bcbc059