Among the at-home entertainment available during this global pandemic is the sports documentary The Last Dance. The 10-part ESPN miniseries follows the Chicago Bulls during Michael Jordan’s final season with the team, complete with never-before-seen footage and interviews with 100 people close to the team. We even see Jordan being interviewed in a palatial home that is not his.
But Jordan’s wife Yvette Prieto and his kids Jasmine, Marcus, Jeffrey, Ysabel, and Victoria don’t appear in any of the interviews. Jordan shares Jeffrey (born in November 1988), Marcus (December 1990) and Jasmine (December 1992) with his ex-wife Juanita Vanoy. Jordan married his current wife, Prieto, in 2013, and they share twin daughters, Victoria and Ysabel, who were born in February 2014. So, why aren’t these people part of the series about the basketball star? Apparently, the director, Jason Hehir, didn’t need to add to his source list.
“I wasn’t interested in the opinion of any wife or kids in this,” Hehir told The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch. “We had the storytellers we wanted and I felt like we had the story covered from every angle.”
Even if the basketball legend’s kids aren’t part of the series, they sure seem to be learning a lot about their dad from watching some of his history unfold onscreen. Jasmine was only five years old when the series was filmed, and she told NBA.com that when a new episode premieres every Sunday, she has loads of questions for her dad.
“I’m definitely texting him nonstop. I think there hasn’t been an episode, a Sunday where I haven’t been like, ‘This happened—let me know your thoughts,'” she said.
She added in her NBA interview that she’s learning more about her dad as a person from watching the game, too: “I think if you remove the basketball aspect and all the accolades he achieved for obvious reasons, I think I’m definitely learning that my dad was really trying to take in the pressures and the expectations and not allowing it to weigh on him and really manifesting it to his own…I’ve definitely been seeing him really take on that role and embracing that role and not running from it and really becoming the greatest player to ever play the game. That’s because he always wanted to do that.”