1 Chapter One: Ode to Michael Jordan’s Playground

Michael Jordan’s Playground came out in 1990. That this movie was produced and released before Jordan had even won his first championship is not just a fun fact. It is not the most notable credit on Jordan’s IMDB page, but perhaps it’s the most significant. A video I watched before going to school every single day in third grade, it is certainly the most significant of all of Jordan’s film credits to me, at least. It may not have been a Hollywood blockbuster smash, like Space Jam; or a 10-part documentary series featuring famed “Former Chicago Resident” Barack Obama among several other celebrities while capturing the attention of the entire world during a global pandemic like The Last Dance; and unlike Air it sadly did not feature any amount of Ben Affleck or Matt Damon (who were probably busy making School Ties at the time). Minus the glitz and glamor of those massive projects; Michael Jordan’s Playground offers plenty of substance, an assortment of fascinating artistic choices, and shines a light on how the world would come to consume MJ through the movies for the next three decades and beyond.

Watching Michael Jordan’s Playground before school every day is not hyperbole. Before my sister and I made our way to the bus stop every morning that school year, at least a few feet worth of Jordan-stamped VHS polyester film spun through the Horstman family VCR. My older sister—a wizened sixth-grader at the time—can attest to this and against her will probably still knows the entire thing by heart (sorry not sorry, Molly). The VHS copy of Jordan’s first foray into acting made its way into our house through one of those brightly colored Scholastic book order forms. My parents couldn’t have had any idea how influential a simple basketball highlight video (or so they thought) would turn out to be, and of course had no idea how often all 42 minutes of it would repeat in our household.

Now is a wonderful time to mention that Michael Jordan’s Playground also marked the directorial debut of famed Hollywood filmmaker Zack Snyder (yes, that Zack Snyder). Based on the film’s aesthetics that we’ll dive into further, we can safely surmise that Snyder’s biggest personal joy has been seeing bodies in slow motion since at least the late 80s. His work with Jordan really sets the tone for his future exploits in projects like 300, Watchmen, Justice League and the entire DC extended universe. As a young director proving his chops, Snyder attempted to strike a challenging balance between traditional documentary storytelling and fantasy tropes in the film. While Jordan had already been the feature of several documentaries at this point in his career, MJP represents his first foray into the realm of fantasy. Never one to let the truth get in the way of a good story, this little video that 3rd-grade-Terry was and present-day-Terry is still obsessed with serves as a perfect North Star to how we view MJ through the movies.

Unlike The Last Dance, we will not hear anecdotes on Jordan’s greatness from Obama or Justin Timberlake or Carmen Electra or Bill Clinton or Nas. Like The Last Dance, this will not be chronological. Many viewers complained that the biggest at-home movie experience of the pandemic was too jumpy, too all over the place. I’d contend a film about Jordan with an all-encompassing ambition can’t be told any other way. There are several films in the Jordan catalog and the story is anything but straightforward in every one of them. It can’t be. There are too many threads to unwind, too many tunnels of tangents to explore, too much lore to unpack, too many slights both real and constructed to resolve, and too many stories in conversation with other stories, both intentionally and unintentionally, for Jordan to ever be a subject where you can start at Point A and simply pass all the necessary mile markers to arrive at Point B. The story of Jordan through the films he’s made isn’t a road trip. It’s a maze.

The purpose of a maze is never to merely delay the arrival at one place after starting in another, but rather to show what can be gathered, learned, and salvaged by making the meandering journey through it. Through every turn, every aimless circle, and overcoming every dead end. Still, there’s no better place to start than at the beginning. Before the opening credits of Michael Jordan’s Playground, his first film, as the “Jumpman” silhouette of Jordan flies across the screen and throws down a thunderous slow motion dunk on a lonely basketball hoop backdropped by a magnificent sunset, Jordan—still in slow-motion—steps out of the shadows and stares down the audience. His movement is accompanied by an extraordinarily loud pan flute riff because of course Zack Snyder really wanted to see Michael Jordan slow-motion-shadow-dunk a basketball while a pan flute goes hard in B Minor in the background.

How could we start our journey at any moment but this one? This moment where Jordan declares in the film’s first line:

“This is where it all begins, with one kid alone on the playground. This is where you fall in love with the game.”

“This is where the fantasy begins.”