GODS OF CLAY

A CROP OF RECENT SPORTS DOCUMENTARIES SHOWS MORTALS MAKE FOR BETTER STORIES THAN HEROES

- Shougat Dasgupta

Herman Melville begins his unfinished, posthumously published novella, Billy Budd, with an invocation of the ‘handsome sailor’, worshipped by his fellows as “some superior figure of their own class, moving along them like Aldebaran among the lesser lights of his constellation”. The Last Dance, a recent 10-part documentary that has captivated the US and much of the rest of the world, follows Michael Jordan, the archetypal handsome sailor, through his last glorious season with the Chicago Bulls before the team, six-time champions in an eight-year period, is broken up by management imperatives.

Jordan is a peerless basketball player. A dollar billionaire who has made much of his fortune from his eponymous Nike shoe, a street fashion icon, Jordan may have thought his playing legend could do with one more polish. How else to explain this hagiography, these hours of relentless self-justification? Except the kinetic thrill of Jordan’s explosive, airborne game makes for an unflattering contrast with the curdled, self-serving reminiscences of an ageing man unwilling to leave his armchair, expensive alcohol at his side, plutocrat’s cigar in his mouth.