There’s a moment late in ESPN’s 10-part series on the 1997-98 Bulls championship season when Michael Jordan looks ready to cry.
“Break,’’ he tells the camera crew. He abruptly gets up and moves out of the frame. There had been tears in his eyes.
A viewer can speculate on why he was upset. But I think I know.
He had been trying to explain why, yeah, maybe he was a jerk to his teammates, a bully who was always pushing them, ridiculing them, humiliating them, giving them grief for being mortal. The self-admitted cruelties — and thus the ensuing criticism from others — were there because that’s what Jordan felt he needed to do to drive his team to win.