The ESPN/Netflix series The Last Dance was touted as an unvarnished look into Michael Jordan’s final season with the Chicago Bulls, drawing from 500+ hours of unseen footage.

The show had nearly 24 million viewers in its first month, yet it has been criticized for being a “puff piece” on Jordan that portrayed the team’s other key players unfairly.

The series’ creation offers some insight into why this may be the case. Jordan’s production company, Jump 23, was a partner in the project. The NBA said that none of the unseen footage could be used without Jordan’s permission.

Two of the people closest to Jordan, Estee Portnoy and Curtis Polk, executive-produced the series. Jordan himself was able to watch it in full and give notes before it aired.

Jordan biographer Sam Smith said that when he was interviewed for the series, he asked the director whether they had sought Jordan’s permission to speak with him. The answer was yes.

Even if the finished product wasn’t directly shaped by any of Jordan’s feedback… it’s still a clear conflict of interest. But to understand why Jordan might want such an unbalanced portrayal, we need to dig a little deeper...

The narrative arc of The Last Dance is that Michael Jordan is competitive to a fault. This is a person whose induction speech into the Basketball Hall of Fame touched on every little grievance accumulated throughout his career.

The documentary follows a similar vein. Each episode shows Jordan slighted by some infraction, only to use that as fuel for revenge: an opportunity to remind everyone who’s no.1.

Some find it telling that Jordan agreed to do the series on the day that the Cleveland Cavaliers celebrated winning their first championship, vaulting LeBron James’s stature in the sport while furthering comparisons between the two athletes.

The Last Dance is a compelling portrait of someone determined to win at any cost. But it also feels like an attempt to restate the significance of Jordan’s career on his own terms… while seriously damaging the reputation of those who helped him succeed.