Jason Hair joins us on this program.

Jason, My first question for you is take yourself back to that very moment when you got the phone call and they said, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, I know that we told you we were gonna air this later in the summer, but how soon can we get this documentary to the people?

It wasn't it.

Ah, precise moment.

We had all been talking about it, um, internally.

And then people online start to talk about it.

And then I was texting with Connor Shell, who runs content for all of ESPN, and all of us were kind of gauging whether or not we could get this thing out in time.

And we knew that we had episodes.

123 and four.

Done.

It was just a question of when we could have the Final Six done in order to get the rollouts everybody on time.

So, um, but we were we were still working towards a mid may finish date.

Were working as fast as we can.

We have been for a while, so that was always the plan was to finish in mid May, but now we could actually start rolling out sooner.

Jason, we appreciate you joining the show.

When this pandemic in the social distancing ends, I want to make sure you call your tailor because you're gonna be standing on a lot of stages accepting awards for this.

Amazing.

You're not in my shirt.

His documentary.

What was your first interaction, like in one Michael Jordan?

Well, the first time medium might be a better story.

So I'm sitting in this apartment here and it was like, 6 30 and I was gonna run out to the gym and I get a call from SD Portnoy who was Michael's manager and she said, Hey, um, and I have been talking to her for a year about this project because they were trying to get it off the ground and find distributors and a bunch of people who make more money than me.

We're deciding how they were going to roll this thing out.

It was gonna be partners.

So she said, Can you make it up to Midtown in 1/2 hour?

Um, Michael wants to have a drink, so I changed out of my clothes rushed up there and I was thinking the whole way up, like, What do you order?

What's the first drink you order with Michael Jordan like you?

So, um, I told my brothers that night it's like meeting Santa Claus like you've heard of this person before.

You've seen them in pictures, but it doesn't like they're not a real person.

That's not a real thing.

That's a statute that's like if the Statue of Liberty, like, bent down and shook your hand iss and you know him.

He's got that charisma, and he immediately makes you feel welcome and relaxed.

It wasn't until, like, 15 or 20 minutes in, and we were taught.

I said to him, Why do you want to do this?

And he said, I don't Why not?

And he said, because of all the misperceptions out there, and there's a lot of footage in this thing that's really raw, and he didn't want people to take it out of context.

And we talked about how you know giving people context from the horse's mouth is actually the way to go to explain why you are the way you are.

But then we started talking about.

I said that there's a lot of misperceptions and somehow the Hall of Fame speech came up.

I know I said, You know, like the Hall of Fame speech.

I don't think people understood that and he lean forward.

It was like it was in a movie, because we're in this dark lounge and he leans forward and this light comes over his face and the glint of the light came off of his hoop.

Aaron, you like this?

Is that the only person who understood what I was talking about?

Me point his finger and his finger goes out like this for, like, a foot and 1/2.

And that's the first moment I was like, Holy shit, that's not Oh, my God, Um, but immediately he was like that.

The only person understood that was Pat Riley.

And I was trying to compliment people from the from the from the very get go.

He was all in on on answering any question that I had.

So, um, and from there was it wasn't until over a year from then that we actually did our first interview on camera.

Wow.

I mean, I have a very important follow up question that you did not answer.

What drink did you order when you sat down at the lounge with Michael?

Jeffrey Jordan Jamison on the Rock did seem to be sipping something brown during the interview.

And there are some problems.

A little bit of a constituting for ice was melted.

Yeah, we see something go down a little bit.

Goes up a little bit.

How many refills that we have?

You had nothing to do with craft services that day focused on the interview.

Good answer.

Why some unique cigars too?

You know, Long boy types, e um he was taking a lot of heat about that off camera.

Ahmad was was off camera.

Came to the shoot that day because they just came from the golf course to that first interview and a mob was like, You got to give him a real cigar.

Is he gonna use that for the whole time?

So right, if you see Michael looking over a shoulder and kind of like smirking, it's at Ahmad.

Well, I mean, first of all, I'm just I'm still reeling after watching just the very first episode of this 10 episode film.

It I'm just really, really teleported me back to that era with the music and the footage and the clothes.

And one thing.

I was really curious about the decisions that you needed in around I, uh the whole chronology because obviously, we're focused on that 97 98 season.

After the 1st 4 minutes, they've already won five titles.

Wow, this really is gonna focus in on that one season, and then we jump back to U N.

C after they took the trip to France.

And you continue to sort of, like, use this back and forth style, which is very well Bradley represented.

How did you sort of attack?

This is not just sort of one season, but the story of a team, the story of his life and how you present that to the audience.

Canal it chronologically.

Well, the chronological spine of the whole Siri's had to be 97 98 because that was the driving force behind.

Why we were doing this is that they had this treasure treasure trove of footage that no one never seen before.

It's sat, you know, in a basement somewhere at the N.

B.

A.

For 20 years.

So that was why we were doing this in the first place.

But with 10 hours, there's only so much you can say about one season on one person.

So we knew we weren't gonna spend 10 hours on just that.

It was going to be the story of the dynasty through the lens of that season.

Um, those 1st 4 minutes of the 1st 6 minutes, I think it is that you referenced most of the world.

They'll be seeing this on ESPN that we've seen it on Netflix outside the U.

S.

And under a certain age demographic.

They know who Michael Jordan is, of course, but they don't know the details of that team.

They may not know that they don't have titles before.

So we had to give a quick primer to a new audience to say who these guys were, but why they were so important and how famous they were back then.

But also, the guys like you Jacoby, who know that story we had to scratch a little nostalgic kitsch, maybe play a little biggie, a little puffy, do something that keeps the people who know the story, uh, entertained as well So that was the episode.

One is a really tricky one to pull off because a lot of it people will be like, I know this.

I know this so that the challenge was keep it interesting enough that it's entertaining to people who are experts but also educate the people who don't know and keep them entertained as well.

And also, he killed in college made a big time shot in a championship game play with James Worthy Future Hall of Fame, where there was a number one pick.

Sam Perkins, Big Smooth with Number five play for Dean Smith.

And then he got to the league and I appreciate the role trip when they were in the hotel and he went up and the teammates allowed him to come in.

And he said he saw a lot of drugs that he had never seen before, and that seemed to be a turning point as it related to how he wanted to be a leader so very young in his MBA career.

He said, You know that I had to lead.

I couldn't leave with my voice because I had no voice.

At that point, he was he was third pick in the draft.

No one at that point knew that he was gonna become Michael Jordan.

Everybody knew that he was maybe the most electric player in that draft.

And he was a college player of the year before, but no one knew what he was gonna become, so he didn't have enough clout to sit to to It wasn't so much leadership by certainly by vocal leadership.

It was saying, I'm gonna have nothing to do with this.

At that point, he didn't even drink alcohol so he would literally hang out in his apartment.

Um, all day long, watch movies.

He had a pool table.

He had a Pac Man machine that he would invite people over to play, Didn't drink, didn't smoke nothing.

None of that.

It was all basketball all the time.

He was a gym rat.

Thanks for watching ESPN on YouTube for live streaming sports and premium content.