“It was a trying year, we all were trying to enjoy that year knowing that it was coming to an end,” he explained. “Phil [Jackson] started off the year by saying, ‘this is the last dance,’ and we played it that way.”
“Mentally it just kind of tugged at you throughout the course of the year, you know, but that this had to come to an end but it also centered our focus to making sure we ended it right,” Jordan continued. “As sad as it sounds at the beginning of the year we tried to rejoice and enjoy the year and finish it off the right way.”
“You’re gonna see a lot of things that people forgot life was that way,” he said, recalling times before the era of social media. “The thing that people are going to learn, and my kids laugh about it when they see it, but we used postage stamps back in those days, you know. Where I had to ask my mom to send my postage stamps.”
He continued, “you had to live life as it came, you know, and each day you learned the education aspect, spending time with friends and family, it wasn’t via the phone, you know, it was actually in presence and you wrote letters.”
“My mom, she kept all my letters,” he said. “It’s somewhat embarrassing, but yet it’s refreshing that I took the time to write a letter to say how much I love my mom and, you know, what I needed in college.”
“Up until that point no one knew who I was — outside the university — I was just known as Mike Jordan,” he said. “And when I hit that shot, my whole name became Michael Jordan. And I think it resonated with a lot of people outside of UNC and I just started piling on that name itself — from the successes that I endured throughout the rest of my career.”
“They were hardworking people and they instilled that not just in me but in my brothers and sisters,” Jordan said. “It just became a part of my nature I always take a negative and turn it into a positive — that all came from my parents.”
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my brother Larry. Larry pushed me and we used to fight after every game, but through that fight, you know, emerged someone like me,” he said. “He supports me and he works for me and the team and I never would have gotten this far without him.”
The series debuts on ESPN Sunday at 9 pm ET and will air over five Sundays through May 17 with two 1-hour broadcasts per week.
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