Back in the mid-1990s, when the Chicago Bulls were not so much a team but a global phenomenon on a rock band scale, there was every kind of themed memorabilia you could possibly think of. There was all the official merchandise: banners, towels, jerseys, basketballs, key chain, bed sheets, beer steins and even sunglasses, plus all kinds of irreverent bootleg stuff. Amid the more humorous, and surprisingly popular, was a set of Matryoshka dolls, one fitting inside the other and so on, featuring each of member of the squad. Along with three rings, a Russian doll set is about the only memorabilia Luc Longley, starting center on the 1996-98 championship teams, keeps at his home in a tiny Australian coastal town. It is a rare one, too. Virtually every set, as you might expect, had Michael Jordan as the biggest and most prominent carving. Longley’s one? It has himself in the prime external position. The “big dog.” “We line us up in order of importance,” Longley laughs on a recently released Australian documentary, arranging the dolls, mischievously placing himself and Steve Kerr first, then Scottie Pippen, then Jordan. “There we go.” The truth of it, Longley adds, turning serious, is that Jordan, Pippen and Dennis Rodman were “the three rockstars, Hall of Fame great players, and the rest of us down here found nice roles to win championships.” It is a generous and accurate admission, yet there was still some disquiet about how Longley, a mainstay in the middle across the last three seasons of the Bulls’ era of triumph, was virtually erased from “The Last Dance” documentary, chronicling one of the most iconic teams in sports history. The absence of any interview with him was explained by two main factors – cost and COVID – detailing the expense and logistical difficulty in trekking Down Under to get his thoughts. Yet even the action highlights and back footage from the docuseries would have left viewers unfamiliar with that squad wondering who Longley was, if indeed they noticed him at all. “Luc was hurt by the fact that he was ghosted out of the series,” said Caitlin Shea, the executive producer on the Australian Story documentary show with her homeland’s national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). “He wanted young Australians to know there was an Aussie on that team.” After “The Last Dance” came out, Shea reached out to Longley. It was a long shot, given his reticence at dealing with the media and notorious reluctance to be in the public eye. As it turned out, he was ready to talk. Longley flew six hours across Australia to give a lengthy and endearing interview, which showed many things, but none more significant than that he would have been a worthy and fascinating admission into “The Last Dance.” Described by Phil Jackson as a “bit of a fish out of water,” he was a far different character to any other on the Bulls. “I was a gentle and empathetic young kid who had to figure out how to discard some of the gentleness and adopt some MJ, if you like,” Longley said in the documentary. “I had to change an awful lot of who I was in order to really do the job. Coming out of that I learned not all of that suited me very well. It has taken me quite a long time to unpick it – and I’m still unlearning it.” The tale gives some deep backstory, explaining how the breakup of his parents’ marriage as a youngster affected him and how he became an accidental basketball star, more interested in a career as an architect before getting scouted by the University of New Mexico when local teammate Andrew Vlahov invited him to meet a visiting Lobos scout. The show pulls no punches, getting into topics such as his own divorce and remarriage and even includes news footage of a tearful Longley when his new family home was lost to a fire. “The Last Dance” was largely told through a Jordan-esque lens. It is not all glowing about the GOAT, but shows his “carnivorous” (Longley’s words) and sometimes bullying side as a means to an end, trying to win championships. The storyline was scathing about former general manager Jerry Krause and gives little bandwidth to those who did not enhance the Jordan narrative, like 1991-1993 champ Horace Grant and perhaps Longley. Yet Jordan seemingly had cause for regret at how Longley’s piece had become so diminished, and when the Australian Story came calling, he gave full and unfettered access to speak about his old colleague. “I can understand why Australia would say ‘why wouldn’t we include Luc’ and we probably should have,” Jordan said. “I guess if you look back and say ‘could I change anything’ that’s what I could have changed. “Luc matters to me. We went through the trenches, we shared a lot. We competed together. I would take him any day of the week. If you ask me to do it all over again there is no way I would leave Luc Longley off my team.” Shea, an award-winning producer whose work rarely ventures into the sports field, was stunned by the extent of Jordan’s commitment to the cause, adding that her request was initially turned down by his management – before the problem was solved when Longley called Jordan directly. By the time filming ended, she had also landed interviews with Pippen, Jackson and Kerr, the only big-name absence being Rodman, who agreed to talk but could not settle upon a mutually-agreeable time. Jackson, with all his Zen philosophies, understood Longley perhaps better than anyone, knowing that to get the best out of him required gentle suggestion rather than fiery exhortations. Jordan didn’t necessarily get that – and pushed Longley relentlessly. “You don’t have to love a bloke to be on his team to care about him, to play basketball together,” Longley said. “I didn’t love MJ. I thought MJ was difficult and unnecessarily harsh on his teammates and probably on himself and I just didn’t enjoy being around him that much. That was cool. It was cool with MJ and it was cool with me. We found a way to coexist.” The interviews, topped off by Jordan, enabled Shea to produce a tremendous piece of filmmaking that aired over consecutive Mondays in Australia and generated an overwhelming response. Yet the real star of the piece is Longley himself, self-effacing and genuinely likable in the kind of way that only someone who doesn’t obsess about being liked or not can pull off. “I might not have been a killer like MJ but you don’t need 12 killers,” he said. “You need a group of humans who appreciate, understand, push and pull, work together. “I’m a realist. I wouldn’t have been anywhere near the NBA if I hadn’t been 7-foot tall.” But he was, and he became a part of history. Not the most important part, not the loudest or most prominent, not the guy who made game winners, but the one who put his body on the line against Shaquille O’Neal and Patrick Ewing and Alonzo Mourning, quietly and professionally and with a minimum of fuss. “The Last Dance” ignored him and who knows who was really behind that – Jordan, the director, the producers? Yet Longley did dance along with those unforgettable Bulls, entrenched in the greatness, his story a missing link in the modern telling of the tale. Until now. Here’s what others have said … Steve Kerr, Golden State Warriors Head Coach: “I know it hurt him. I watched it with my kids and I thought about Luc’s omission from it and how much he lost from that, and I feel bad for Luc.” The Pick and Roll Blog: “Australian basketball is being celebrated more than ever, with Luc Longley’s recent documentary reintroducing him to the world.” |
