Why Michael Jordan’s Washington Wizards years were never in ‘The Last Dance’

If Michael Jordan only wants to remember the good times, of course he’s not reliving his days with the Washington Wizards.

While sports are still suspended, the sports world is at a loss for what to do with itself. Luckily, Michael Jordan‘s ‘The Last Dance’ documentary got us through for five weeks, but with all ten chapters having aired, the Jordan nostalgia is over. However, some people are still begging for more.

With so much attention paid to each and every detail of Jordan’s Chicago Bulls career, Rachel Nichols couldn’t help but wonder aloud where were Jordan’s Washington Wizards years in the epic reliving of his unparalleled career.

Nichols isn’t the only one wondering where The Last, Last Dance documentary is, either.

On one hand, of course Jordan’s Wizards years weren’t included in the documentary. The piece was centered around his final season with the Bulls. The rest of the career exploration was contextual.

But now that we’ve seen the documentary in full, it’s pretty obvious why the Wizards years didn’t get their own chapters. They weren’t Jordan-esque.

His stats certainly were. Even in his late thirties and forties, Jordan was still often the best players on the floor. He put up All-Star numbers with relative ease. So to that degree, Jordan was still himself. Individually, Jordan was still the GOAT.

But the Wizards years weren’t like the Bulls years. For all the talk of Jordan simply wanting it more, never accepting defeat, and willing his team to victory, his teams in D.C. didn’t do a whole lot of winning.

The Wizards finished 37-45 during each of Jordan’s two years in a Wizards uniform. They never made the playoffs. In his defense, it’s tough for anybody – even the greatest to ever lace them up – to lead a team to the playoffs at 38 and 39 years old. And he wasn’t exactly playing with Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman anymore.

The season before Jordan put on a Wizards uniform, the team went 19-63. The season after he finally called it quits for good, they went 25-57.

But still, back to back seasons below .500 doesn’t fit within the Jordan narrative. Blaming a talentless roster around him would just be making excuses. Right? And that’s not what Jordan does.

Plus, acknowledging the Wizards years means Jordan would have to acknowledge the second chapter in his basketball life; his career as an NBA executive. It’s been just about the polar opposite of his time as a player. In the front office, Jordan has never been able to find the success he did while on the court.

In his three seasons as a Wizards executive, the team had a winning percentage of 37.8 percent. Luckily, he’s been able to do a bit better in Charlotte. Just a bit, though. In 2006, Jordan became the franchise’s second-largest shareholder, and eventually became the majority owner in 2010.

Since the start of the 2006-07 season and excluding the current season, the Hornets have won 44 percent of their games. In the 13 seasons since Jordan joined the franchise, they have had three winning seasons and three playoff appearances. They also managed to completely squander Kemba Walker’s talents in that timeframe, too.

None of this takes away from Micheal Jordan, the greatest basketball player ever. But after relishing in Jordan’s six titles, what’s the point in talking about the failures that come next?

Sure, we could marvel at him taking three years off and coming back to average 22.9 points, 5.7 rebounds, and 5.2 assists in his late thirties. Or how he continued to average 20 points per game into his forties, even scoring 40 or more points eight times in two season. That’s all legitimately impressive. But for Jordan, the individual accolades were always second to winning. And his stats alone don’t tell the whole story from his D.C. days.

We’d also have to talk about how he drafted and then abused Kwame Brown. How he ran Richard Hamilton out of Washington only for him to become a multi-time All-Star and champion with the Detroit Pistons. And how he made things miserable for younger players like Jerry Stackhouse.

For Wizards fans, the novelty of the GOAT getting buckets in the nation’s capital and cruising out of MCI Center in his Benz is fun to remember. But for everyone else, the Wizards years represent everything Jordan wasn’t.

Jordan’s time in Washington doesn’t feed into the myth, so it is simply left out of it. And that’s fine.