Michael Jordan (The Life)

24:29How they reacted made all the difference. And it was very similar. Now I could let these dream killers kill my self -esteem. Walton's not going to do that. West is not going to do that. Jordan's not going to do that. Or I could, and this is the main point of why I'm bringing this to your attention. Or I could use my arrogance as the steam to power my dreams. I use it as my gas. So they say that I'm gassed. but without it I'd be last so I ought to laugh. I really do believe based on what I read in this book and what I've learned spending you know all these hours studying Michael Jordan I feel at the very beginning he used his arrogance his maybe fault that his false arrogance as the steam to power his dreams and once his belief in himself matched with once excuse me once his skill level matched his confidence.

25:19There was no turning back and there was just going to be no denying or no stopping Michael Jordan. This is a little bit about the progress he's making playing college ball. And this is going to be maybe bizarre to you. But again, I think of everything new I read, I think in terms of all the stuff I've read up until this point, right? So what Michael Jordan is about to say here is going to be very similar to what we learned from Edwin Land, right? The founder of Polaroid. And so this is Jordan. He says, I started to do things other people couldn't do. And that intrigued me more because of the excitement I got from the fans, from the people, and still having the ability to do things that other people can't do, but want to do.

25:59And they can only see that through you. That drives me. I'm able to do something that no one else can do. So I read that paragraph and what popped in my mind is Edwin Land, one of my favorite quotes from him. My motto is very personal, Lance said, and may not fit with anyone else. Don't do anything that someone else can do. And so now we have another coach talking about what Jordan learned from, he winds up losing. They thought they were going to win the championship in high school and they wind up losing their last game. And so the coach is talking about that, describing why these events are important in Jordan's life and understanding him, right?

26:38You've got to understand what fuels that guy, what makes him great. He took the pain of that loss. For most people, the pain of loss is temporary. He took that loss and held on to it. It's part of what made him. This is so Jordan, again, one -on -one, very unique. But what he went through, what he experiences, the way he reacts to things is not. There's a couple of examples that popped to my mind. there's a there's a talk on youtube where the the lakers invited uh the rock dwayne johnson to give him a talk and the name of the talk or the theme of the talk is remember the hard times and he talks about what keeps him they're like why the hell are you making so many movies like you're already wealthy like why are you working so hard when you've already you know you built an empire you're wealthy beyond belief and so he thinks about the time where he got cut uh not only from uh he winds up losing his spot there's a whole i'm not gonna go like i'll summer I'll give you like pre -summer here, but it's like probably like a 15 minute talk, something like that.

27:34But he talks about losing a spot in college, not making the NFL, then getting cut from the Canadian Football League and having seven bucks in his pocket. That's what he named his company for. And he just says, like, I always like I start my day. Remember, like my back is always against the wall. And so the fact that I never forget the hard times makes me not put take my foot off the pedal. This is something we saw back on Founders No. 116, the founder of Seagram's, Sam Bronfman. He might have been a billionaire in his day. This is the guy that started Seagram's, this gigantic alcohol company. And in that biography I read of him, his daughter is telling the story.

28:1030 years after this happened, Sam Bronfman sitting in a mansion with his family, shuddering, literally shuddering at the thought of having to go to his family, was so poor of having to go to school with holes in his clothes. That thought didn't leave him 30 years later. And the reason I bring this up and I try to tie all this together, because it's motivating. It's motivating for me. It's motivating for other people. I'm sure it's motivating for you. The best description of this that I've ever found came from the first autobiography James Dyson wrote, Against the Odds. And he talks about that.

28:45He says, throughout my story, I will try to return to Brunel. That's Isambar, King of Brunel, his hero. and to other designers and engineers to show how identifying with them and seeing parallels with every stage of my own life enabled me to see my career as a whole and to know that it would turn out the way it has. And so the point there is Dyson went through this, Jordan, like you're going to have to go through periods of pain. Jordan went through it, The Rock, Samuel Bronfman, and in Jordan's case, he's telling us, use that pain. And The Rock said the same thing, Sam's saying the same thing, use that pain as fuel.

29:23So now Jordan arrives to college, 18 year old kid. And we see something that he does for the next 20 years of his career, the total immersion into the fundamentals. And later when he gets to view how other NBA players approach their craft, he's shocked about how lazy they are, understanding that they're not practicing as much as he is. They're not working on the fundamentals. And I think it also gives them a boost of confidence. It's like they have no idea. I think later on he says something like, um, they have no idea of like the work the game requires. I have a quote on that. So we'll get to that in the future.

29:55Uh, Michael Jordan arrived on the North Carolina campus in the fall of 1981 to find that he was about to play for a very different kind of coach. This is Dean Smith, legendary college basketball coach. Michael refers to him, uh, multiple times. And in this other book I have on him, uh, as his second father. And so it says the next stage of Jordan's journey brought a total immersion into the discipline of the sport. When you come out of high school, you have natural raw ability. Jordan once explained, No one coaches it. When I went to North Carolina, it was a different phase of my life. Knowledge of basketball.

30:25He's downloading knowledge of basketball on rebounds, defense, free throw shooting, and different techniques. This is just a random sentence I want to pull out here for you because I thought this relates to something I've heard Michael say in other interviews. One of the most heavily recruited college basketball prospects, this is like a year or two ahead of Jordan, was this guy named Ralph Sampson. And he made the cover of Sports Illustrated a bunch of times. He was as unknown as Jordan was. Ralph Sampson was known, if that makes any sense. So listen to what he says here. It's fantastic. Ralph Sampson reflected on Michael Jordan.

31:03This force that had upset all of his best laid plans and monumental expectations. This next sentence is the most important part. No one had seen him coming. and so in this interview Jordan said something that I saved on my phone forever and he talks about everybody after he retires even when he was towards the end of his career they would name all these other basketball players some of them even had names as Baby Jordan younger guys they're saying this is the next Jordan, this is the next Jordan and this is what Jordan said about this which I think ties into what Ralph Sampson just told us and no one had seen him coming this is what Michael Jordan says don't be in a rush to try to find the next Michael Jordan First of all, you didn't find me.

31:45I just happened to come along. And this is the most important part. You won't have to find that next person. It's going to happen. Okay, so let's go to his greatest skill. Remember, freshman. I think we're still, I'm pretty sure he's still a freshman here. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Okay, yep, he is. Okay, so this is on the ability to listen, to take in helpful information and apply it. Easily the great, and he doesn't have a monopoly on this skill. That's something you and I can do, right? Easily the greatest reason Jordan was successful in those first months at Chapel Hill was his ability to listen.

32:17To his coaches, his capacity to be coached was his single most impressive attribute, beyond even the 18 -year -old's spectacular physical gifts. Dean Smith asserted, I had never seen a player listen so closely to what the coaches said and then go and do it. And I love this anecdote. It's in the book, but it's also in The Last Dance. Even so, Jordan's approach was not perfect. He's 18, of course. how it's impossible that it'd be perfect right jordan's occasionally casual effort had raised a red flag uh when roy williams challenged him on it jordan replied that he was working as hard as the others which prompted williams to reply that if he wanted to accomplish great things he had to work that much harder than the others previous in this conversation was jordan telling williams that he wanted to be the best right he wanted to be the best player so it says williams This is the result.

33:08Williams was struck afterward by the fact that it only took one conversation with Jordan. No one would ever outwork him again. My greatest skill was being teachable, Jordan later observed. I was like a sponge. And that's also made me think, it's like why I'm constantly pushing, you know, encouraging other people, read as many biographies as you can, spend as much time as you have doing this because it's a form of listening, right? You're having a one -sided conversation. there's a tweet I saw one time I saved on my phone and it says I learned more from speaking with other others than reading is complete nonsense the smartest people in the history of the world have distilled their life's work into a few hundred pages no a 30 -minute conversation with your buddy won't teach you more and I think the whole point is there the main point is the smartest people in the history of the world have distilled their life's work into a few hundred pages when you pick up that book you're having a one -sided conversation and you can't talk back you are forced to listen.

34:07Jordan just got done telling us that his greatest skill was listening, the ability to be teachable and to act as a sponge and absorb it all. So now let's go to his second year in college. The first year they win the championship. It's called The Shot. I've actually watched it on YouTube several times. It says that that's another turning point in his life where he goes from Mike Jordan to Michael Jordan because he hits the game -winning championship, but he's got an older teammate, James Worthy, who himself goes on to a great career in the NBA. But the section is now we're starting to see that, remember, the confidence outstripped the ability to begin with.

34:43Now we're seeing they're kind of, they're slowly, that gap is narrowing. And so another reminder, I believe in me. There had been those like James Worthy who thought his confidence as a freshman had been too much. but this second year they all began to grasp that Jordan's belief in himself reflected a level of intensity no one had contemplated before. He's also differentiating himself, Jordan that is, from other people. You know people are in college, they're drinking, they're doing drugs, same thing happens when he gets into the NBA at the very beginning but now you have all these students that lived on the same floor as Jordan when he's 19.

35:23So this is observations from fellow students about Michael at 19. And you can really summarize this sentence, or excuse me, this section. Focused, serious, committed. He was surprised to see little evidence of a party animal. Jordan was a serious guy. Then he had a teammate, he said, and they're comparing and contrasting Jordan's teammate. Buzz was definitely not as dedicated to basketball as Michael was. Buzz is getting distracted by partying, by girls, by everything else that you would expect from a college athlete, right? The impression I got was that he was so committed, he wouldn't allow himself to be sidetracked.

35:54Even at that age, he knew he wanted to be the best and he knew the pitfall and he wasn't going to fall into it. He seemed very sure of himself, sure of what he wanted to do, and nothing was going to stop him. And this is what Jordan said, I have a dream to play in the NBA. And so one of these guys was like one of the people that lived on his floor. his goal after college was to be in movies and work in Hollywood. This is the early 80s. It was really hard for, as an athlete, to watch tape on yourself. It talks about he would have a VCR and a camcorder at the time. This guy, I forgot his name, would film all of Jordan's games and maybe his practices.

36:44Definitely his games. I don't know about his practices, but what he said, Jordan would come and sit in my room and watch himself for hours. And he said what he was struck most by is not only how much time he dedicated to rewatching what he was doing, but how silent Jordan was. He wouldn't say a damn word the whole time. And so, again, I think that really is just another example of what Jordan had just said, what Dean Smith had just said, what all his coaches said. His ability to listen. The game is speaking to him. And he's sitting there and shutting up and taking in that information and using that information to improve in the future.

37:18The end of the year, they wind up coming up short. They don't win the championship again. And so we see two traits that wind up staying with him for the rest of his career. Still to this day, if you hear him talk. And so it says, number one, he hates losing. And number two, that he demands excellence from his teammates. Regardless, Jordan plunged into a deep funk at the abrupt end of the season. I felt a bitter taste in my mouth, he said. I was so upset with certain teammates. Excuse me. He was so upset with certain teammates. He felt lack the necessary competitive drive. Such questioning of teammates came to be a common theme in his life.

37:53It was very hard for me. It was hard to deal with a guy who wasn't as competitive, he later said. So he's going to play for the Olympics. This is his first Olympic experience around this time. This is before they had professional basketball players, I think, because these are all college guys. and they go down to Venezuela to play in the Pan Am games. And something's going to take place here that reminded me of a trait that Arnold Schwarzenegger had as well. I think it's hard as like drive and commitment to excellence. The two people that pop to my mind most when I'm reading the book and how they compare to Jordan is really Steve Jobs and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

38:31And we'll see, like Arnold says, like, my drive was not normal, right? People thought I was strange. Like, why are you so driven? and like, stop, do less, is what everybody around him is telling him. We just heard one of the coaches say Jordan would sneak in. He was so obsessed with working, he would sneak in and do more work, right? It was very rare. So they go to Venezuela. The accommodations for the amateur athletes are like really crappy. And the note I left myself is, my room doesn't have windows or doors. Doesn't matter. Arnold didn't care that his weight room didn't have heat in the winter.

39:03He knew, hey, to get to my goal, breaking into Hollywood. He was following Reg Park's blueprint. He's like, I got to win Mr. Olympia. How do I win Mr. Olympia? I have to work out all the time. So he had not only to go to the gym, but when he came home, he continued lifting weights, realized the more reps I do, the closer I get to my goal, right? But he's living in Austria at the time. In the winter, like his, the weight that he had like a very, they were, they didn't have a lot of money. Like a very like primitive weight room. It would literally be below freezing. Arnold didn't care. And we see the same thing with Michael right here.

39:37I don't care. I have a goal. Get out of my way. I'm doing this. Team USA made his way to Venezuela for the games and discovered their dormitory was little more than a concrete shell. The village wasn't completed. The windows weren't on. The doors weren't on. Jordan took one look at the concrete, then pitched his bag on the floor and said, let's get to work. Hartman was struck by the all -business approach. No whining, no complaining about the accommodations. We're here to get our medal, Jordan told his teammates. Let's go about our business. So he's being coached by the legendary Bobby Knight at this point in the story.

40:12Legendary infamous, infamous, whatever you want to describe him as. But I thought this was interesting because what Bobby Knight's approach to, I didn't know this before I read this one paragraph, is very similar to what we learned from Bill Walsh in his book, The Score Takes Care of Itself, right? You do every little thing correctly. You don't have to worry about the score. And so it says Knight let his Olympic charges know from the very first day that he was focused on perfection. I have told them I have no interest in who we're playing or what the score is. I'm interested in this team being the best team it can possibly be.

40:41And I'll push you in any way I can get to that end. So that line, I'll push you in any way I can get to that end. That sounds like that could have easily come out of Jordan's mouth. Okay, so let's get to his business. And we'll see the business that is now paying him $180 million a year. And who knows where that's going to go in the future, right? it starts out, it's very unknown. The prehistory of the Jordan brand is fascinating to me. And so I'm going to go into that. I'm going to spend a lot of time in this section, actually. So there's this guy named Sonny Vaccaro. He says, in basketball in 1978, you could buy your way into a hell of a lot of good graces.

41:21And Sonny Vaccaro would transform Nike into living proof of that axiom. He was a guy from the streets. Basketball wasn't there to let him into its circle. So he operated outside the circle and became incredibly successful for himself and the company. And he plays a very important role into Nike. He's the one that's going to tell Nike, no, no, stop spreading your money. What's our budget? Our budget's 2 .5 million? Give it all to this dude. And so I'll get to that in a minute. By 1977, Vaccaro paid a call to Nike's offices in Oregon to pitch the idea for a new shoe. Nike wasn't interested, but Rob Strasser, one of the company's top executives at the time was fascinated by Vaccaro's relationships with all those coaches.

42:00So these are all these college coaches that he's been developing relationships with. They're eventually going to, Nike's going to give him this budget. And he's like, hey, go out and pay all these coaches, right? With the end goals, obviously have them wear our stuff. Other, so it says they were fascinated by his relationships with all those coaches. Other Nike bosses wanted to have the FBI run a background check on Vaccaro, but Rob would have none of it. He hired Vaccaro at $500 a month and put $30 ,000 into his bank account and told him to go sign coaches to Nike endorsement contracts. You have to remember, Vaccaro said, at the time, Nike was just a $25 million company.

42:36The main idea was simple enough. Get coaches to outfit their amateur players in Nike shoes, sending a strong message to fans and consumers. And so this is where Vaccaro is going to tell him, just double down on one person. And this is where Jordan's agent, I don't know if he was the one that came up, I think he was the one that came up with the idea because before he had a lot of his clientele was like tennis players, individual players. So they had an idea. It's like, why don't we market basketball players as an individual? Yes, it's a team sport, but focus on the individual. It says Nike executives had a $2 .5 million budget for pro basketball shoe endorsements, and we're thinking about spreading it among many young players.

43:12Don't do that, Vaccaro said. Give it all to the kid. Give it all to Jordan. To make one player work, Nike would have to tie together many things, including shoes and clothing. into a unique product line complete with advertising and branding. Rob Strasser, the guy from Nike, approached David Falk, which is Jordan's agent, and told him that Nike was thinking of signing Jordan. They agreed that Jordan should be marketed as they might market a tennis player, as an individual more than as a basketball player. And that's just one of many key decisions. But this idea, okay, let's market this guy as an individual that just happens to be playing a team sport.

43:48This was fascinating to me. This is Jordan's first reaction to Nike. he was an adidas fan at the time uh converse was the official shoe of the nba so converse was in the play goes adidas they wind up turning him down he did not want to go with nike remember nike's a tiny company at this point the first time in my life i'd ever met michael we sat down and talked about him going to nike he didn't even know about nike i told him michael you don't know me but we're gonna build a shoe for you no one has this shoe jordan thought vacaro so this is a conversation between him and sunny vacaro jordan thought vacaro seemed shady michael was a pain in my ass, Vacara recalled.

44:22First of all, he didn't compute the money. Second of all, he was still a kid. He kept asking for a car. And Vacara was like, do you understand the money we're going to give you? You can buy whatever. Why are you asking for a car? You can buy whatever car you want. A shoe contract meant nothing back in the 80s. So he was totally indifferent. He didn't want to come with us. He wanted to go to Adidas. So eventually there's a meeting set up between Jordan and his family, his mom and dad, and Nike. And Jordan calls his mom the night before. And so the note of myself on this page is his mom was key.

44:55She made, she, there would be no Jordan brand, at least not with Nike, that is, without his mother. And so it says the night before Jordan and his parents were to fly to Oregon to meet, to hear Nike's officials present their vision. Jordan phoned his parents and told them he wasn't going. He was tired of all his recent travels, and the last thing he wanted was a cross -country trip for a shoe he didn't even like. Just pause there. Imagine this alternative history, right, where there's no Jordan and Nike collaboration. This is crazy. How valuable was his mom, right? Literally, the decision she's about to make is worth billions.

45:30Dolores Jordan insisted that her son be at the airport in the morning. She would have it no other way. And at this point in his life, he would still listen to her. Eventually, he's going to get so big. They still have a good relationship, but they wound up being alienated. I think this was right after his father's murder. Before, you know, Jordan becomes uncontrollable. But at this point in his life, he's still very much listening. He says later on, everything started with her. So it talks about that they're in the meeting, fast forwarding. Vaccaro couldn't take his eyes off Dolores Jordan. He watched her expression as, this is really smart how Nike pitched this, by the way.

46:03He watched her expression as it was explained that her son would receive royalties on each shoe sold. Vaccaro told the Jordans that Nike was all in for its commitment. We are all in. I was betting my job. Nike was betting their future. It was unbelievable. That was our whole budget. For Michael's mother, it was like a family. If we're willing to bet on it. It's like we were saying we wanted you this much. Michael, we're going to go broke if you bust out. That was the whole point of it. And this is what I mean. It's not like I'm not. You're not paying me a wage. were partners, right? Very smart.

46:40It was Dolores' reaction, he recalled. Someone was making them a partner instead of paying them a wage. So now he's in the NBA. And this part really just hypes me up because it really does inspire me to keep pushing and to try to... You can always do more. And we're seeing from a very young age, he's coming to a really crappy team. There's actually... Okay, let me read this part first. I want to tell you this note I took on the very end of the Jordan documentary. So it says, he came to practice. Remember, practice. Practice. This is not Allen Iverson here. This is Michael Jordan. He came to practice every day like it was game seven of the NBA finals.

47:20That's what set the tone for our team. So they say within the first, I think by game three, they realized this kid is the best player we have on the team. There's no doubt I'm playing at a new, tougher level, he said. I've got a lot to learn. You knew you had somebody special because Michael was always there at practice 45 minutes early. He wanted to work on a shooting. And after practice, he'd make you help him. He'd be working. He'd keep working on a shooting. He didn't care how long he was out there. Michael loved to play the game. So what I left, the note I left on myself on this page is Stephen King quote number nine.

47:53If you love it, you do it until your fingers bleed. So usually in the show notes, you can see, I usually leave a link for like my highlights. and usually it's like my top 10 highlights from the books that I read. It's also, it's on my personal email list. If you happen to be interested, I'm just, for any book I read for the podcast, I'll just send you an email if you want it. It's obviously free. You don't have to do anything. But it's just like, what I'm trying to do is design within constraints. Before I'd have like 30, 40 highlights on there. And I'm like, no, I force myself and it takes quite a while.

48:26It's easy to whittle down like, let's say you have 50 highlights. It's easy to get it to like 20, maybe 15. It's really hard. It takes a while to like, which one am I going to kick off there? But I liked the exercise and it's a way for me to like go and review things really quickly. I can just pull up. What are the 10 most important things I learned from the Stephen King book, for example? And so what I, the note of myself here, we're talking about Stephen King quote number nine. So it says, this is what Stephen King said. Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless. When you find something in which you're talented, you do it, whatever it is, until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head.

49:01The sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate, and this is a program I'm on, four to six hours a day every day will not seem strenuous. I'm doing the reading part, not the writing part, obviously. Four to six hours a day every day will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things and have an aptitude for them. So that's exactly what we're seeing from Michael Jordan as a rookie. I'm showing up to practice 45 minutes early. When I'm in practice, I'm practicing like it's game seven in the NBA finals. And then when it's over, I'm pulling in coaches and teammates and saying, teach me more, teach me more, teach me more.

49:36And so the notes, I also took extensive notes on the Jordan documentary. And so he's talking about, he says this in the last episode. Really think of, especially the last sentence here. So he's comparing and contrasting. He wins his last title in 98, wins his first one in 91. So now we're in like 1984. force words. He's got seven years of struggle before he gets there, right? So this is Jordan talking. In 91, I was young, full of energy and hungry. In 1998, when you won six out of eight championships, six championships out of eight years, and yet just as dominant as you were in 91, that's where the craftsmanship came in.

50:16I think 98 was much better than any of the other years because of how I was able to use my mind as well as my body. So I just, I'm a sucker for him using that word craftsmanship, right? I love that idea. It was maddening for me to leave him my peak. But this is why, this one sentence is really why I wanted to put this in to where we're at in the book. Because it's, we're in a shitty, what he's going to call a shitty team, right? We're in that part, right? But it's just really motivating because it talks about the power of one individual, the power of a formidable individual. we went from a shitty team to one of the all -time best dynasties all you needed was one little match to start that whole fire and i love that sentence that he said one little match to start the whole fire and i love that they put it at the end of the documentary too he right now and this guy that's showing up 45 minutes before practice playing like it's game seven listening and doing extra work he is that little match, that one person that's going to start a gigantic fire.

51:20And that fire is going to be one of the all -time great dynasties. And so he comes right out the gate. He's going to win rookie of the year, but I'm going to go to the business part. This is the best advertising you could possibly ask for. At the time, the NBA had this rule where you could only wear, it says, the league's guidelines called for players to wear white shoes. So the first Jordan one was the famous red and black model that people are still wearing and using today. And so they wind up banning that shoe. And so it says, NBA said Jordan would have to pay $5 ,000 each time he wore the new shoe.

51:51Nike immediately phoned Sonny Vaccaro. So this is what Sonny said. Both Rob and Peter, these executives at Nike, said, fuck them. That's exactly what they said. I said, what do you mean? We're going to do without him wearing the shoe on the court? And Stresser quickly decided that no, Nike was going to have Jordan wear the shoes anyway, and that the company would pay his fines each night. The NBA could not have handed a better marketing platform to Nike. When you tell the public that something is banned, what does the public always do? Tell them they're not allowed to do something and they do it.

52:25Nike would ring up an astounding $150 million in Air Jordan sales over the first three years, which in turn brought Jordan the first wave of profound personal wealth. So they had thought, now here's the weird thing, and I can't get confirmation here. So the thing I'm about to tell you, I got confirmation. So Nike thought that they would sell $3 million worth of Jordan shoes within the first four years. This, the author just said that they sold 150 in the first three years. I've, everywhere else I've read besides this book said that they sold 126 million in the first year. So I don't know if they did 126 million the first year or 150 million the first three years i mean that is quite a big difference what they're telling you is it's way higher than what nike forecasts it and part of that is due to the fact that you know you have this this gigantic media attention now saying hey these shoes are so like they're banned and now you have a lot more people that know about it and it obviously helps that this guy came out like right away like okay he's one of the best players I'm going to fast forward.

53:31He scores, he winds up scoring 63 points in a playoff game, which was a single game record at the time. This is in 1986. So he's been in the league for a few years. But the reason I bring this up to your attention is because after the game, there's a famous quote that Larry Bird, he's playing against the Celtics, Larry Bird, and he says, that's God disguised as Michael Jordan, Bird said afterward. it. And Jordan, again, a main theme, if you listen to him talking, you read about him, he really respected those that came before him. He wants to learn from them. He wants to compete with them, right?

54:05He wants to be better. This is very similar to Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs would idolize founders that came before him. He wasn't worried about being the richest person. He wanted legacy, like historical legacy. He wanted to be on Mount Rushmore. And indeed, I think in And Walt and Isaacson biography says that he wanted to be like a step above his heroes. Right. Jordan, same way. So Larry, at the point that Larry said this, Larry's one of the best, if not the best player in the league. At the time, he had three straight MVPs, multiple championships, if I'm not mistaken. And this is what Larry, this is, again, go back to the thing you and I have been talking about, like the difference between real like false confidence and real confidence.

54:49It's like, this is, you have somebody that's extremely talented, somebody you admire telling you, dude, you're really good at this, right? I earned Larry Bird's respect. To me, that showed me I was on the right track. That was the biggest compliment I had at that particular time. Okay, so he's a fantastic player, one of the best players in the league, getting all -star games, scoring championships, all this other stuff, but they're not winning, right? They're not winning. This is where he realizes that it goes back to Jordan being smart. It doesn't mean he's going to come along easily, but he understands, like, a single person cannot win the game.

55:21I've got to come up with a different philosophy. So this is going to be an intro to Tex winner. Tex winner. I don't know why I could just call him Tex. Tex winner. And this is going to be the architect of the system that the Bulls use to win their championships. Phil Jackson and Tex continue to use this for the Lakers after Jordan retires. But let me read my note to you first, because I think this will actually be beneficial, right? Because what Texas, what's happening here is like stuff you and I can do, right? So there's four things I'm going to tell you about Texas. One, he looked at an existing industry differently than other people.

55:57Okay, very important. Number two, he was able to innovate as a result of that difference. Number three, he developed his own philosophy on work. And number four, Jordan's response to this. Jordan said, Texas taught me a lot about basketball. I loved him. That is a quote from, I think that's a quote from his Hall of Fame speech. So let's go into this. And this is about the triangle. They call it the triple post and the triangle. I'm going to just call it the triangle. Okay. In his late 60s at the time. So Jordan's this young, you know, aggressive kid. He's probably, how old is he? 23, maybe? Somewhere around there.

56:37And Texas in the 60s. In his late 60s, Winner had more than four decades of first -rate coaching experience. Other people in basketball scoffed at Tex Winter as some sort of oddball. Winter's offense was not just X and O's, and he liked to point out, as he liked to point out, but a system, a philosophy for playing the game, complete with an entire set of related fundamentals. Tex was focused on detail in a way that no other pro coach even considered. Tex was a very obstinate, aggressive man. He believed in the triangle. That was his gospel. He wanted it installed. So he's not the head coach. I think this might be Doug Collins.

57:19This is a coach. Eventually, he's going to get pushed out. Jerry Krause really believed in Tex Winter. And Jerry Krause is the GM of the Bulls and kind of the villain in The Last Dance. But it says, Winter believed he had been hired to teach. So he taught wherever possible with the sort of frank, direct feedback that most players had not heard since middle school. And so this direct frankness, obviously, is going to be a little bit of conflict, which is completely normal. This is a famous story. So it winds up, you know, Tex is trying to get Jordan to play more team ball. And so it says as Jordan walked in and Jordan at this point in his career, he's dominating the ball, scoring a will, does really well during regular season, maybe even at the beginning of playoffs.

58:03But they're not they can't beat a team. Right. If you're an individual, you can't beat a team. So it says, as Jordan walked off the floor, Tex told him, there's no I in team. Jordan looked at winner and replied, yeah, but there's an I in win. So it's going to take several years of failure for them to eventually, Doug Collins gets pushed out. Phil Jackson's in. Phil Jackson's always focused on defense, he says. He's the head coach, but then he lets Tex teach everybody offense. And so that's when they're going to, I'll get to all this in the future. I'm just telling you because it's several pages in front of us.

58:35I do want to pull out something that's in the interim, though. This is about the fact that he didn't just start with the Jordan brand, right? He signed your first deal with Nike, then he has success, he resends another one. But this insistence on having equity, on being a partner is really important. As Michael's getting more and more attention, he sells, of course, more shoes. And so he's starting to build the foundation of what will eventually be his future billion -dollar empire. So he says, First, I thought this was a fad, Jordan would say, looking back on his response to the shoe line. But it is far greater now than it used to be.

59:06The numbers are just outrageous. Eventually, a fat new Nike contract will be signed, a deal that will be opened the door a few years later for the emergence of the Jordan brand and create unimaginable wealth for the athlete. So it talks about the sequence of events. He signs first, then he gets the big raise, then the Jordan brand. That was a seminal deal in the history of deals. There's no question. And to Michael's credit and to Nike's credit, they created an empire. And so I saw somebody, I was reading, somebody analyzed the deal. And they said not only is it the greatest single athlete endorsement deal of all time, but it's also the greatest like.

59:41So he made more money than anybody else, but also said he's he's underpaid. Those two things could be true at the same time, which is wild to think about. So as we just said, OK, they got an idea. Jordan will listen, but you also you need him to fail to learn. Right. And so I'm going to pull out. this is during the point in his career where they just cannot get past the Detroit Pistons, right? Can't even get to the finals if you don't go to Detroit. Detroit's going to wind up winning two championships. It's a very good team, obviously. But the Noah left myself here, and he needed this failure to become better.

1:00:18That is the main theme I'm trying to talk to you about. Because you're going to expose his team's weaknesses, and you want your weaknesses exposed, right? We just talked about what Nick Saban said. Average players want to be left alone. great players want to be told the truth. They want to be coached all the time. And you want to know if you're messing up. And so the competition, the competition has studied you and found a way to beat you. What do you do next? The Jordan rules, which is the system that Detroit used to counteract Jordan's Bulls. The Jordan rules succeeded against the Bulls so well that they became a textbook for guarding athletic scores.

1:00:59In the 17 regular season and playoff games between the Bulls and the Pistons over two seasons, the Pistons would win 14. That is an ass kicking. You're playing somebody 17 times and they beat you 14 times. That is how lopsided this is. That scheme helped Detroit win two NBA championships, but it also helped Chicago in the long run. Check this out. By forcing Jordan and the Bulls to find an answer. I think that Jordan Rule's defense as much as anything else played a part in the making of Michael Jordan, Tex winner said. And again, this is not a straight line. It's not a straight line. It's an up and down process.

1:01:37And so we see Jordan, he's still not ready, still young, still immature. He has not figured it out yet. To me, this is like the most inspiring parts of these life stories, right? So saying afterward, his coach, Doug Collins, suggested to Jordan that he was taking too many shots and not hitting enough of them. Jordan responded with a sort of childishness. For game five, Jordan made his point by taking a mere eight shots from the floor. So he's throwing a fit. It was the kind of action that had driven Collins to privately tell Reinsdorf, who owns the Bulls, that the team simply could not win with Jordan.

1:02:11Remember, Jordan is still not ready. He has not figured it out. Jordan was angry and frustrated. And I guess I didn't know I left myself on this page I need to tell you. This part is called Agony and Terror. Imagine believing your dream will never come true. Jordan was angry and frustrated, but he wasn't about to reveal his pain at the loss. He would say, don't let anyone know that you're hurting. Don't let other folks know what's in your mind. You know as much about them as possible, but for them to know more about you is to give them an edge. He hid his frustrations. He hid his sadness. He hid his disappointments and his agony.

1:02:50The Pistons would go on to claim their first title and the Bulls would face yet another bout of recrimination, turmoil, and change. And check out this quote here. For a while, it looked like we were never going to get past them. And so Kraus makes the decision, even though Doug got them, Doug Collins got them to the Eastern Conference Finals. They won a bunch of games. who ends up letting him go at the end of the season, puts in Jackson. This is the first smart move by Phil. And this is his first idea as the new head coach. I brought in Phil and we talked philosophy. The first thing he said is, I've always been a defensive -oriented guy.

1:03:26I'm going to turn the offense over to Tex, and I'm going to run the triangle. So Phil's an interesting guy. And I might read his autobiography, too, because I think it's fascinating. But this is, I got to bring this up because it's in the book and it's in the documentary and I have notes on both. So I want to talk to you about this because this was actually surprising. I also, I think the first time I may have missed this when I watched The Last Dance, I actually think Kobe was the one that brought this to my attention. Because Kobe noticed this about Phil Jackson and the Bulls. And he said that you would notice when you're watching the games, like, whether they were up 20 or down by 20, they were unbothered.

1:04:07and so Kobe liked the idea of copying this practice and this idea of mindfulness of being in the moment of being over complete control and in the documentary he talks about I think it was the year they finally got to pass the Pistons like Pippen, Scottie Pippen, Jordan's right hand man was fouled really hard and before they'd get emotional outbursts and physical fights and stuff and they knew they were going to beat the Pistons and Jordan I think says in the documentary um once he got heartfelt and just just basically didn't react like I'm not gonna let you see me get upset I'm completely unbothered I'm completely in the moment like he said I at that moment I knew like we had him like they they were playing emotional emotion blurs judgment and we were cold -blooded right and so this has to do with this this mindfulness that they that Phil taught Michael which is really surprising because you Michael's just this psychopathic, driven, competitive person.

1:05:06Kobe being two, and yet they both adopted this mindfulness. It's like a derivative of Zen Buddhism. Let me read this to you, and I'm going to go to the last episode of the documentary as well. Jackson soft -pedaled his eccentricities at first. It would take time for him to get his players to accept meditation and mindfulness and his other unique practices. Remember, this is another, I love the idea of like taking an industry that already exists and analyzing it and then doing something different, right? It's never too late to make a change. I don't know how many coaches in the NBA and at this point we're doing this.

1:05:41In time, Jordan would take great benefit from Jackson's Zen approach and the mindfulness sessions he provided the team, no matter how unusual they seemed. and so in the last episode of the last dance they had just won the final championship well actually let me read something that happens at the beginning there's like another um author who's wrote i think he's written i think at least i think he's wrote two other books biographies on michael and this is what he said about michael most people struggle to be present most people live in fear because we project the past into the future michael is a mystic he's completely present He was never anywhere else.

1:06:22His gift was that he was completely present. The big downfall of otherwise gifted players is thinking about failure. He would say, why would I think about missing a shot I haven't taken yet? And so now this is in 98 after they win their last championship. The night of the championship, Jordan's playing the piano. It looks like they're in a hotel room. I can't even tell where they are, but he's got like reporters and stuff in there too. And so it says, the note of myself is Jordan's playing the piano in his hotel room after winning a championship as championship number six. and asked, you got another one in you.

1:06:53And his sentence was very interesting, something that we see that where we are in the book is what Phil's introducing him to. This is Jordan. It's the moment, man. It's the moment. That Zen Buddhism shit. Get in the moment and stay there. Just stay in the moment until next October, and then we'll know where the hell we are. so now I want to go back to this idea of adopting this philosophy as a triangle and again when you're learning something new when you're trying to change something the transition is not going to be easy and this transition that they're in the history of the bulls which is going to build a foundation for that dynasty right it reminds me of the Robinson Crusoe story in that book the Tao of Capital I think that's founders number 70 somewhere back there by Mark Spitznagel I'm going to read a quote from there in a minute but it's idea that you go slow now so you can go faster later.

1:07:45Okay. The more he learned about it, the more he saw how steadfastly Tex believed in it. You're talking about Jordan there. And Phil was the head coach and he was saying how things are going to be. And it was like a gold mine. You got players in the system seeing it and prospering, but that took much selling by Jackson and months with the team under Tex winner's instruction. The transition was not easy. Some observers sense an atmosphere boarding on mutiny over Jackson's first two seasons as Jordan's frustrations built. Making these changes would require much patience. So from Jordan's perspective at this point, it could seem like we're going to step backwards, right?

1:08:20We're going slower on purpose, but we will go farther and faster in the future. The operative phrase became that Jordan was going to have to learn to trust his teammates. Later, Tex would look back and marvel at Jackson's determination to stick with the offense and his persuasiveness with Jordan. They didn't know it at the time, but they were embarking on the most remarkable era in pro basketball history. Rooted in the great discipline, Jordan and his teammates began developing that first year. Their philosophy, their system, made Jackson's Bulls unlike any other team in the NBA. It didn't happen all at once.

1:08:59He started to see that over a period of time as the concepts built up. And so what do I mean about that? So the Tao capital, this whole, the central theme of that book is the roundabout, the main point. And I've read that book so many times. I've read, I've listened to some chapters. I can't, the chapter on conifer trees, I think it's chapter number three if I remember correctly. Can't remember how many times I've listened to that. I still don't even think I understand it completely. I definitely don't understand it like the author does, right? But there's two stories in that book that really synthesize his main point that helps me at least have a tiny bit of grasp of his overall idea.

1:09:37And there's a story of Henry Ford and of Robinson Crusoe about this idea of taking a step backwards to being better than you otherwise would have been without that step backwards sometime in the future. So he talks about Robin Crusoe on the island trying to catch fish. So just a few highlights. He needs to catch at least five fish a day to sustain himself. and so he winds up cutting back to trying to invest in ways to catch even greater fish with less effort in the future. Robin Sucrusso ultimately catches more fish by first catching fewer fish. Very counterintuitive to humans, right? And exactly what Jordan's going through in his career at this point in the book.

1:10:20By focusing his efforts in the immediate towards indirect means, not ends. It is highly strategic, yielding, or losing now to realize an advantage in the future. So instead of catching five fish today, five fish the next day, he catches, I think, like, you know, two or three, but he's using the time that he would be fishing to build a net and a boat and all these other things that are going to make him better in the future, okay? At last, the boat and the net are ready. The hungry Crusoe takes to the water and in less than two hours catches five fish, which used to take him all day. Now with his daily needs met, he can invest in other roundabout production, such as a rack for drying fish and evaporating seawater to collect salt and preserve them.

1:11:03Soon, Crusoe has an exceedingly efficient fishing operation, catching far more fish than he could consume and accumulating a stockpile of protein for his diet and equivalently a stockpile of time for replacing and creating even more capital goods. as Crusoe shows us, entrepreneurs engaging in roundabout production must contemplate the basic considerations of how long it takes, what it costs, how many resources must be invested to get increased output, and how long one has to wait for a payback. Henry Ford, the embodiment of the roundabout entrepreneur, would invest a tremendous amount of time and effort to assemble the tools of production in order to improve speed, efficiency, and output in the manufacturing process in the future.

1:11:51So we might take a temporary step back, might be a year or two, but eventually this system, this philosophy will enable us to accumulate resources in the case of an entrepreneur, that could be time and money. In the case of a basketball team, championships that we wouldn't have been able to get to otherwise, right, without taking this step backwards. So this is right before they go on their first championship run. There's an old axiom that's really applicable here. It's darkest before the dawn. Okay. This is the right before. Check this out. This is going to replay. So he's got two championship runs, right?

1:12:23This is the first one. The second one, it comes right after a great deal of frustration, right before a great deal of frustration. Same thing's going to happen in the second championship run. All right. So it says furious with his teammates, Jordan cursed them yet again at halftime, then sobbed in the back of the team bus afterward. I was crying and screaming, he recalled. There's that pain. Excellence is often the capacity for taking pain. I made up my mind right then and there, and it would never happen again. That was the summer I first started lifting weights. If I was going to take some of this beating, I was also going to start dishing it out.

1:12:56So talking about the physical play that the Pistons played with, right? They were beating the shit out of him. And he was, you know, was really thin. I think he adds like 15 pounds of muscle. I forgot what it was. It was a good deal. I got tired of them dominating me physically. With each Chicago loss in the playoffs, critics had grown more convinced that Bulls were flawed as a one -man team. Others wondered if, check this out, this is what they're saying about Jordan, right? He's about to start what is going to be one of the greatest dynasties in the NBA. Other people were wondering if they weren't headed for the same anguish as Elgin Baylor, Pete Maravich, Dave Bling, all great players who never played on a championship team.

1:13:35Jordan was infuriated by such speculation and criticism. him. He was literally nauseated by the losses each year in Detroit. So I'm going to fast forward a little bit to start playing as a team. This is where they're going to win their first championships. This is after seven years of struggle. And you can see this. Jordan even used that term. Pretty sure he's hugging the trophy right after they beat the Lakers in the 91 finals. And the note of myself is even a legendary talent like Michael Jordan needs to be coach. This is about him, you know, trusting that you can't win as an individual. You have to win as a team.

1:14:10And so let me tell you the story. It's fantastic. It plays out over a few paragraphs. So it says, the story has been passed along by many Jordan teammates who supposedly suffered his demands and indifference over the years. It's one of my favorite stories. Steve Kerr, who filled John Paxson's role on subsequent Bulls teams, said in a 2012 interview. So this is where he learns to trust John Paxson. Michael's having a rough second half. They're double teaming him. And he's forcing some shots. and Phil calls a timeout with like minutes left in the game. And he's looking right at Michael and goes, Michael, who's open?

1:14:42And Michael won't look up. He goes, Michael, who's open? Finally, Michael looks up at him and goes, Pax. And Phil goes, well, throw him the fucking ball. And this is the result. This is what I mean. Even a legendary talent like Michael Jordan needs to be coach. Paxson would make five long buckets in the final four minutes as time and time again, Jordan penetrated. Drew the defense, the double team, then kicked it out. Paxson would finish with 20 and Pippen 32 as the Bulls closed out the championship with a win in game five. The tears became a tide as Jordan made his way through the bedlam of the locker room to inhabit the moment he'd sought for seven years.

1:15:22I had never lost hope, he said. Okay, so they wind up winning again in 92 and then somewhere after they go, this is the dream team, the Olympics. and there's a conversation between uh that's taking place between jordan and scotty pippen on the bus and they're talking about their olympic teammates and this part really like fired me up because they were surprised and by their by their laziness like they just like when jordan went to play at the five star and he's like whoa i can actually hang with these guys like i'm you know they might have not have known me i'm just a country boy from wilmington but like i'm just as good as these people maybe even better they didn't realize how hard they were working and the dedication they had to their craft that others didn't so once you realize like oh it kind of makes sense like he was you're about to talk about this other player named Clyde Drexler Clyde played for the Portland Trailblazers um there's a great there's a if you ever want to look on YouTube where it says like just put in Michael Jordan I took I took it personally and it's like somebody there's a bunch of these videos they cut up all the times over this 10 -hour documentary uh The Last Dance about all the times like Jordan just he constantly takes things personally, right?

1:16:31And one of these is talking about going into the matchup in the 92 finals was that Clyde is Jordan's main rival. And you spend so much time watching this documentary, I'm starting to laugh at times where I don't know if they expected laughter. And one of this is where he had already said over and over again, like, I took this personally. This happened. I took this personally. And so he talks about this and he says, Clyde was a threat. I'm not saying he wasn't a threat. But me being compared to him, I took offense to that. And I just started laughing. And then I read this part in the book and I was like, oh, this kind of makes sense because he beats him in the finals.

1:17:10Then he plays with him on the dream team, right? And then he's doing this interview like 20 years later. And it kind of, you'll see what he means. So Scotty and Mike are talking here and he says, just imagine Pippen told Jordan, how good Clyde Drexler would be if he worked on fundamentals with Tex Winter. Like so many NBA players, Drexler was operating mostly off his great store of talent, absent any serious attention to the important details of the game. So this is how you can differentiate yourself from your competition, right? Jordan had been surprised to learn how lazy many of his Olympic teammates were about practice.

1:17:44How they were, and this is so, so important, this is the most important sentence of this entire section. How they were deceiving themselves about what the game required. Now, this is very fascinating because there's always parallels, right? There's never just one. It made me think of, I just happened to hear this clip of Chris Bosh. I forgot where he was talking. I don't know. You know, it was his Hall of Fame. Maybe it might have been his Hall of Fame speech. I can't remember, but Chris Bosh was on the 2008 Olympic team with Kobe Bryant. And I'm going to read this to you. This is fascinating.

1:18:16Tell me it doesn't relate to what we just heard. Jordan saying how they were deceiving themselves about what the game required. And so Krish says,

1:18:53finals days earlier. Meanwhile, I'd been off for months and I was still exhausted. What he did that day was incomprehensible to me. That dedication he had only days after falling short of an NBA championship. That taught me something I have never forgotten. Legends aren't defined by their successes. They are defined by how they bounce back from their failures. so let's go back to this sentence jordan had been surprised to learn how lazy many of his olympic teammates were about practice how they were deceiving themselves about what the game required so that is something that's been on my mind a lot this week like what can i do what is my version of practice to make sure that i'm like when i come and talk to you i put in as much as much work as I possibly can to make sure that these podcasts are as good as they can be.

1:19:50And that could be applied to Jordan's applying it to his, you know, basketball. I'm applying it to founders. You're applying it to whatever it is you do during the day. He was surprised to learn how lazy many of his Olympic teammates were about practice, how they were deceiving themselves about what the game required. So let's skip ahead in the book. And this is, this might be, I don't, it might be my favorite thing because it's like, again, something I want to constantly think about and to take away. He's like, love to know that myself is love to practice. Believe in it. And so this is Jordan about the, this was, this is what built his life.

1:20:28Think about like, he understands, okay, my business, the Jordan brand that I now have equity in is only going to be successful. And he said this over and over again, it's like marketing, like the marketing I did for that brand was what I did on the court. If I was scoring two points, if I was getting bounce out of the playoffs, no one's buying my shoes, right? So you really think about practice as a foundation. His love of practice winds up making him billions of dollars over the course of his career, right? That's what he says. Rather than miss games, Jordan had to sit out his favorite time with the team.

1:20:57I have always liked practice and I hate to miss it. When you miss that one day, you feel that you've missed a lot. You take extra work to make up for that one day. Check this sentence out. I have always been a practice player. I believe in it. Now, I'm skipping. I mean, obviously, you know, this book is almost 700 pages. I have to skip over a lot of parts. We're fast forwarding a few years. They've won the third championship. Right after that, his father is murdered. He retires, goes to play baseball, eventually comes back to basketball. And so this is where we're going to see a direct parallel with Steve Jobs.

1:21:34This is after Jordan's 18 -month hiatus. Steve Kerr had never played with Jordan before. And so it says, Kerr was stunned by the way Jordan seized control of the entire team's mental state, for better or worse. We had no idea, Kerr said. He was so intense and condescending in many ways. None of us felt comfortable. On a daily basis, he would dominate practice. Not just physically, but emotionally. In an intimidating fashion, he was going to make us compete, whether we wanted to or not. there were certain days where you're exhausted and Michael doesn't need rest. He doesn't sleep. Even today, I don't even understand this.

1:22:11There's a lot of stories in the book about that, by the way. He doesn't need rest and other guys do. And on those days when people were tired, he would ridicule us and conjole us and yell at us. It was tough. It was very hard to deal with. So there is a comment that Steve Jobs made in this interview. I think he's still at next. This in between his time, his two stints at Apple, right? And he talks about, he has this metaphor. I've heard it referred to as the Steve Jobs rock parable. So he's got a metaphor for teams working on a product that they're passionate about. It's very similar to Michael Jordan's approach, right?

1:22:47So he says, this is Steve talking. There's an 80 year old man that lived up the street from me. This is a young kid at the time that's happening. One day he showed me a dusty old rock tumbler. We took regular old ugly rocks and some liquid and powder and put them in the tumbler. He said, come back tomorrow. The next day, we opened up the can and we took out these amazingly beautiful polished rocks. The same common stones that had gone in through rubbing against each other, creating a little friction, fighting, creating a little noise, had come out these beautiful polished rocks. It is through a group of incredibly talented people bumping against each other, fighting, working together.

1:23:24They polish each other. They polish the ideas. So that metaphor of that, you know, you're going to have conflict in great teams that are trying to do things that are difficult. Steve Jobs had it at Apple. Jordan's having it. Steve Kerr just told us Jordan's having it in practice constantly. It's the same idea. So he's coming back, but he had been playing. He came back towards the end of the season. They only had like a few weeks before the playoffs, if I remember correctly. And they, you know, he's not in shape. He hasn't had an entire season to go with the team. So he winds up losing. And this is what I mean about the darkest for the dawn right before his second three -peat.

1:23:59Same thing's happening. So I watched this on YouTube too, where Nick Anderson on Lando Magic winds up stealing the ball at the very end and steals the ball from Jordan, passes it, they wind up... Basically, Jordan lost the game for his team, right? And he talked a lot of junk. He's like, number 45, because Jordan came back wearing 45, is not number 23, Anderson said afterward. And so it says it was a profoundly humbling moment for Jordan. He gets the ball stolen from him in half court by Nick Anderson. We had the game won, and then we go on to lose that series. His last title was in 93. So he goes two full years without feeling like he's on top of the world.

1:24:38Failing his team had bruised his outsized pride. For years, he had taken the Bulls' fortunes on his shoulders and lifted them with brilliant performances in front of millions of adoring witnesses. Now, it was his fall that was on display. and so jordan's uh trainer is a guy named tim grover actually listened to his audiobook he has an audiobook about what he learned from training jordan and kobe and other athletes called relentless it's an extreme book if you pick that up by the way there's gonna be some surprising like he's very frank let's just put it that way um but tim told the stories like normally at the end of the season jordan would take a little bit of time off and he would tell me when he wanted to meet again so right after they lose the magic would this just happen And Tim is having a conversation with Jordan.

1:25:27He's like, all right, well, I'm about to take off. Give me a call when you want to meet. And Jordan says, I'll see you tomorrow. And Tim's reaction is like, oh, okay. I'll see you tomorrow then. He's like, I'm not wasting any time in getting better. So he knows he needs to get in basketball shape. You don't get better at something. This is another I left myself on this page. You don't get better at something by not doing it. And his pride is on the line. That is motivating. I'm the kind of person who thrives on challenges, Jordan said. And I took pride in people saying I was the best player in the game.

1:25:53But when I left the game, I fell down the ratings. down below people like Shaq and Akeem Olajuwon. That's why I committed myself to going through a whole training camp, playing every exhibition game and playing every regular season game. At my age, I have to work harder. I cannot afford to cut corners. So this time I plan to go into playoffs with a whole season of conditioning under my belt. So not as he fully committed to conditioning and taking care of his body, but we got to take care of our mind and our body, right? Right. And I love that quote that's in Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography.

1:26:26It's like the Greeks gave us he learned it from one of his first mentors. This older guy was telling him, it's like, don't just work out your body, work out your mind. He said the Greeks gave us the Olympics and the great philosophers. You got to take care of both. This is where he starts getting into Zen and meditation. There's a psychologist that's hired by Phil Jackson. This guy's named George. George Mumford, a psychologist and mindfulness expert, taught the players to meditate. In short time, Jordan gained a new level of trust with Mumford and told the psychologist that if he had met him earlier in his career, he might not have spent his life a prisoner in his hotel room.

1:27:00So that comment really stood out for me for two reasons. One, how much of success in life comes down to how we manage our mind, that internal monologue that's constantly messing with us. And then two, Jordan's level of fame can destroy a person. So let's fast forward a little bit. this is Jordan on his leadership. And this, again, is going to echo that Steve Jobs. Be a yardstick of quality. Most people are not used to environment where excellence is expected. And this is what he says. And this is a very formidable, hard dude. He's not playing around by any means. You have a better understanding for me as a leader if you have the same motivation, the same understanding for what we're trying to achieve and what it takes to get there.

1:27:38Now, if you and I don't get along, certainly you won't understand the dedication it takes to win. So I run those people off. I don't run them off with the intention of running them off. I run them off with the intention of having them understand what it takes to be a champion. Remember, he just said these people didn't understand what the game requires, what it takes to dedicate yourself to winning. You have to focus as a leader. That's what I have to do. That's going through the fucking stages of being on a losing team to a championship team. So he's talking about that's where he learned it. He's like, I didn't start on championship teams.

1:28:08I started out as a loser. I had to learn this. I had to transform myself into a champion. And this is not going to be easy. So this is the last year he's playing on the Bulls. There's an entire chapter when he's on the Wizards. As a Jordan fan, I have to just omit that from my memory. I deny that ever happened, by the way. But this was really interesting. All good things come from compounding, right? And at this point, Jordan has spent multiple decades training, learning, working really hard, being coached constantly. And he says, it is quite possible that no one ever did anything better than Michael Jordan played basketball later in his career.

1:28:47Jordan said that he thought that last year was his best year, the fact that he used his mind and his body, right? There is a quote in The Last Dance that said something like, Michael Jordan was as good as his job as anyone else has ever been at their job. And I think that's why he's worthy of study, right? So a big part in this book and in The Last stances, the idea that they should have had the opportunity to come back. And you see this, it's very hard to keep high performing, high ego teams, companies together. It's just nearly impossible. And so I'm not going to spend too much time on this because I think the documentary does a good job explaining everything, especially just watch the last episode.

1:29:26And I think Jordan's, the way Jordan left it is just, they should have had the right to come back, right? You didn't have to have, and you got, you know, giant egos in the office, you have giant egos in the coaching staff, you have giant egos in the players. Like it's just, it's disappointing to see, but completely understandable, right? So the know that for himself is this is not winning. Winning is winning. And they made the classic mistake of not realizing how good they had it while they had it. So this is about decisions made. Like Reinsdorf, the owner, was always like to win business deals.

1:29:57That's what means about winning. This is not actually winning. It says, Pippen was key to Jordan's success, but Reinsdorf wanted to trade him for cheaper assets. That would allow Reinsdorf to win the deal, but it was hardly a way to treat the best basketball team in history. Conversations with Kraus, the GM, and Reinsdorf, the owner, kept turning to how they were going to pivot away from the Jordan era. And this is really the most important sentence to this point. I think it kind of sums this up and maybe a mistake we could avoid in the future. They were so busy leaving leaving it, they failed to comprehend what they had when they had it.

1:30:27And that's just, that's built into our nature. There's old sayings, like you don't know what you had until it's gone. Same thing. They were so busy leaving it. That's just another way of saying that. They were so busy leaving it, they failed to comprehend what they had when they had it. One sentence here about Jordan talking about his teammates, the fact that he was just relentless on them. He says, Jordan presented a singleness of purpose that was hard to dent. So let's go back to that screenshot I took, a guy that was totally focused on one thing and one thing only. And that sentence made me think of when I was reading Henry Singleton, the book on Henry Singleton, the founder of Teledyne, Arthur Rock, which is one of the first venture capitalists and an investor in Teledyne, Intel, and Apple, I think.

1:31:15He said something about Henry Singleton that made me listen to a 60 -hour audiobook because of one sentence. And I'll probably read the physical book and turn it into a future episode of Founders because I think there's a lot we can learn from. But Arthur Rock said, describing Singleton, he's like de Gaulle. Because he's talking about Singleton was obsessed. He has a singleness of purpose like de Gaulle had and making sure France was free. and in Teledyne's case and making sure Teledyne's was successful, that was Singleton's main purpose, single -minded purpose of Jordan too. You know, Jordan presented a singleness of purpose that was hard to dent.

1:31:54Another quote here from Steve Kerr on Jordan that I thought was fantastic. That's what made him a badass. He wasn't just a talent. It was his understanding of it all, the work ethic, the game itself, the strategy involved. He got it all. He understood it all. And that comes back to what we were talking about at the beginning, like I was talking to my friend with, about like if he identified what he was weak at and he worked to get better at it. He wanted to have a complete game. So there's a few chapters of this book. Remember, it's a biography. It's not just about his playing career. It talks about like what he did when he retired.

1:32:25You know, he's a young guy, young guy, retired now, wealthy beyond means, beyond belief rather. He got a private jet. I want to give you, in case you decide to read the book, which I highly, highly recommend you do, I want to give you an accurate assessment of what you're going to run into. There's a lot of crazy stories. This dude was extreme in all aspects of his life. And he essentially retires and just goes on this global parting spree. I'm just going to read this. There's a story that happens that takes place in the book over two or three pages. I'm just going to read the one paragraph I wrote on it.

1:33:03His post -playing schedule. There's an entire story about him having dinner and drink at a strip club with the founder of BET, who owns the Charlotte Hornets or Charlotte Bobcats at the time, Charles Oakley, his friend and then former teammate, and Mark Cuban. And the story goes on. It's pretty wild. And they wind up, what makes it even crazier is like they party until like three in the morning. I think they leave the club at like 2 .30, fall asleep at three, and they meet back up at 5 .45 in the morning to play golf the next day. So I don't know. I think the only one that bailed was the founder of BT, but I think Mark Cuban showed up, Charles Oakley and Michael Jordan.

1:33:38So this idea where they just went out partying all night, sleep for two hours, and they're up again. He has a relentless schedule. And now it's crazy. It wasn't dedicated to basketball. It was dedicated to golf and gambling and girls and alcohol and just pure hedonistic debauchery. and so now this is the section um i mentioned earlier where they're talking about kobe bryant in 2008 the quote uh jordan has on my note is i couldn't have played the way i played if i didn't watch the guys prior to me this is what i meant he's got a giant ego but not when it comes to this stuff comparisons of the two players kobe and jordan routinely generated heated debates on the internet frankly jordan didn't see what the fuss was about after all human behavior is memetic humans copied and aped one another like every rock band that for decades had sought to be the Beatles or the Rolling Stones who themselves had derived so much from the great American bluesmen of previous generations.

1:34:34So it's just a way to say everybody learns from somebody. Let's take the information that was useful to people before us and push it down to future generations. We're doing a service to future generations of humans, right? Obviously his play had created a path for Bryant, Jordan observed. But how many people lighted the path for me? That's the evolution of basketball and anything else, by the way. There's no way I could have played the way I played if I didn't watch Dave Thompson and the guys prior to me. There's no way Kobe could have played the way he played without watching me play. You know that's the evolution of basketball.

1:35:05You cannot change that. And now we get to the part, he's an owner of the basketball team going through, you know, same struggle again. And this is the part I'm going to close and this is where I ask you to remember how this conversation between you and I started. And the reference they're about to make from Birmingham is when he, right after he quit basketball, he winds up playing, I think, like double A ball or something like that, the baseball, like the minor leagues. And he sent to Birmingham. He did that to try to get closer to his father, right? So this whole story starts out with the main focus is trying to prove to my father I could accomplish something.

1:35:43I don't have to just go in the house. I can actually be useful. I can be successful, right? And so he's got the stories where he's having conversations in his mind, going outside, looking up at the stars in Alabama and, uh, and having conversations with his dad that, that was just brutally murdered. And you see this, like something to really cherish the relationships we have and realize the impact we have that goes in both directions. Like if you're a parent, how important you are to your kids cannot be overstated because you see Jordan as a grown man sitting down and doing interviews for this documentary 25 years after this happened to him and there's still tears in his life and he's just a reminder to me like i'm in that i have two kids myself like i need to make sure that i'm not only being the best person i can be but also to develop a relationship between them and understand how devastating it is going to be for them when i inevitably leave so let's try to tie this all together okay during the dark nights in birmingham he had visited often with his departed father.

1:36:45So it wasn't much of a leap to figure out that on his bleakest nights in Charlotte, Jordan again likely sat alone in the darkness of his arena, reviewing all that had unfolded with James Jordan, telling the old man of his dashed expectations and embarrassments. It is also not hard to imagine on those nights that Jordan's thoughts veered toward fantasy, or at least visualization, settling on the best thing that he could ever hope to find as an owner. There, shimmering for him in the distance, is a grand season, a deep playoff run at another championship. In the midst of this final fantasy, the buzzer sounds.

1:37:22It's almost time for tip -off, but the arena is suddenly astir. Michael is nowhere to be seen. He's in his office, in the bowels of the arena, sitting and talking with his dad as he had his entire life. The son's eyes are bright and wide and starting to feel to the point that he's fighting to see his old man through the blur. He's suddenly struck to ask the enduring question. What do you think of me now, Pops? How about all this? Do I still have to go back in the house? One can imagine Jordan pausing, then realizing what his closest friends and his many fans understood a long time ago, that he doesn't have to ask anymore.

1:38:07His long -ranging debate can be put away forever now. The answer is right there in front of him, in front of all of us. Something he can clearly see. And that is where I'll leave it. I hope you enjoyed it. I really did put a lot of time and effort into this. Highly recommend you read the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is 212 books down, 1 ,000 to go. and I'll talk to you again soon. Before you go, make sure you tap the link that's in the show notes on your podcast player to become a member of Founders AMA.

1:38:43You'll be able to email me questions directly, which I then turn into AMA episodes. You can also add your name and a link to your website with your questions so other members can check out what you're working on. And you can immediately unlock and listen to the 27 episodes that I've already made and add your own question that you and other members can learn from.