“He put that finger up and started to choke up” – The Last Dance director recalls Michael Jordan crying after an emotional on-set interview originally appeared on Basketball Network.
When “The Last Dance” aired in 2020, it felt like history breathing.
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Ten parts, stitched from raw footage and fresh interviews, capturing the final ride of the Chicago Bulls dynasty. It revisits greatness. It reawakened it. Michael Jordan’s 1997-98 season returned in high definition — the game-winners, the grudges, the hunger.
When director Jason Hehir had set out to document a season, what he uncovered was the man at the center of it all, more layered, more haunted, more human than the world had ever seen.
Jordan’s emotional reveal
The first interview took place before the lights and microphones had even settled into rhythm. Less than an hour in, the moment came unexpected and unprompted.
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“It was 45 minutes into the first interview and he was tearing up and he had that finger — the first time I met him — that huge finger that comes out,” Hehir remembered. “He put that finger up and started to choke up, and I could see a tear in the corner of his eye and I’m thinking like, ‘What is going on here?'”
It was a stillness that stopped everything around it. One of the most composed athletes in history, face-to-face with the gravity of his own story. A tear forming in real time. A pause heavy with memory. The finger, the silence, the weight.
Hehir had intended to tell the story straight, a chronicle of dominance and detail. But the interviews began unspooling something more intimate. Jordan was reliving the past.
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The family memories, the competitive scars, the isolation. His tone would shift. His body language would change. Sometimes his voice would crack. Sometimes he’d stare past the camera, lost in a moment only he could see.
The deeper the camera went, the more Jordan opened. Not to explain himself — but to feel it all again. The price of being singular. The ache beneath the win streaks.
A historic documentary
Hehir knew it the instant it happened.
“That’s a moment that is going to be a powerful moment in this documentary,” he said. “I don’t know where it is going to go; we just started this process… But it was just one of those moments.”
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The doc would be full of those unexpected pockets of candor that blurred the line between past and present. Jordan’s voice cracking when talking about his father. The tension when the subject of leadership came up.
The silent stares between old teammates. Those fragments of vulnerability gave the series its pulse.
When it finally aired, The Last Dance lit a fire. Viewers tuned in by the millions — not just for basketball, but for depth. The documentary blended archival film with new interviews that felt immediate. Jordan. Pippen. Rodman. Phil. Even rivals chimed in, offering perspective on moments frozen in time. The result felt alive. Painfully alive.
But the glow wasn’t without friction. Scottie Pippen, still measured and proud, criticized the final product. He felt the focus leaned too far into Jordan’s narrative, too tailored to His Airness. That tension only added to the documentary’s gravity, a reminder that legacy isn’t owned. It’s shared, and it’s fought for.
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Yet, through every frame, one image remains unforgettable. Jordan — the most revered of them all — choking back a tear in the middle of a sentence.
For once, the game stepped aside.
And the man stepped through.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jun 15, 2025, where it first appeared.