The Numerous Economic Truths In ESPN's Excellent 'The Last Dance'
The great Austrian thinker Ludwig von Mises always rejected the idea that economics was “the dismal science.” What about the study of human action and progress could possibly be dismal?
The problem, as it’s always been, is the economists. Not terribly clear about what causes the individuals who comprise any economy to act productively, they’ve long hid behind graphs, equations, and impressively obtuse measures of “growth” like GDP.
The better explainer of economics is life itself. If you can observe the much-less-than-dismal world around you, you understand economics intimately. Life instructs. And then if sports is life, then sports instruct really well given the immense interest in sports among the living.
Which brings us to The Last Dance, the concluding-on-Sunday 10-part documentary about basketball legend Michael Jordan. Ostensibly about the 1998 World Champion Chicago Bulls ahead of the team being broken up, in reality it’s a story of Jordan. Jordan’s life is on its own an excellent economics lesson; some of which will covered here.
To begin, in the first episode Jordan’s mother Deloris re-reads a letter her son wrote to her as a freshman at North Carolina. That she received a letter from him, as opposed to an e-mail, is a reminder of how much the world has changed. Few send letters anymore since communication is increasingly instantaneous, and largely costless.
This speaks to the genius of economic growth. While most economists hiding behind supply/demand charts view economic growth as inflationary given their backward focus on demand, the actual truth is that investment is the source of growth. And investment is the happy process whereby today’s luxuries become tomorrow’s common goods; that, or they’re erased altogether.
Notable about prices is that in a letter that would have cost .15 cents to send in 1981, Jordan apologized to his mother for the phone bills he was running up from Chapel Hill. It’s so easy to forget, but “long distance calls” used to be a thing. College roommates used to aggressively scan phone bills given the substantial costs that came with phoning someone as close as the neighboring city. One guesses Jordan’s calls were within North Carolina, but they were very expensive.
Thanks to economic growth born of abundant investment, few consider the cost of a call, anywhere, in modern times. Amazing in consideration of Jordan apologizing to his mother for in-state calls back in the day is that college kids today can video chat around the world for the cost of an internet connection that is likely paid for with tuition and scholarships. Economic growth is all about falling prices despite what economists tell you.
Once in the NBA, Jordan quickly established himself as the best, and most exciting player in the league. Sadly, three games into his second NBA season Jordan broke his foot. Crucial about this is that the agony of not playing basketball well exceeded the pain of a broken limb. Jordan was a well-paid basketball player, but money was almost beside the point. He couldn’t not play. He had to get back on the court. Even though some physicians said he was risking his career by coming back early from the injury, Jordan’s maniacal dedication to his craft meant that he couldn’t resist coming back. He had to play.
The above rates extensive thought at the moment, and amid hideous lockdowns foisted on millions of American workers by politicians on the local, state and national level. In shutting the economy down, politicians didn’t just rob tens of millions of their income. It can more realistically be said that politicians and the alarmed robbed people of what gives life meaning. Work plainly was life for Jordan. Imagine the agony for him if he’s a second year player in 2020. How painful for him to not play, to not compete.
About what’s been said, none of it’s to say that coronavirus doesn’t bring risks. Ok, but life itself is risky. And life is awful when we can’t do that which reinforces us. How tragic then that politicians and the alarmed deprived individuals and businesses of the chance to innovate on the way to doing their jobs and running their businesses safely. People lost income, some esteem, along with the knowledge that can only be attained by doing, about how to operate amid a pandemic.
Jordan’s passion for the game of basketball also rates consideration from the angle of activism, or lack thereof. All things are political these days, or maybe they always were. The Last Dance covers Jordan’s decision to stay out of the 1990 U.S. Senate race between Republican Jesse Helms and Democrat Harvey Gantt. About his quietude, Jordan famously quipped “Republicans wear sneakers too.”
Jordan makes plain in the documentary that he was focused on his craft, and not on activism. Amen. Thousands of times over. Why, why, why do Democrats and Republicans have to so persistently insult genius and their base by trotting out celebrities of different stripes for political reasons? Arguably the reason they’re celebrities is because they’ve developed amazing talent at something through tireless work that renders them narrowly brilliant. In short, good for them.
We’ve thankfully evolved economically such that more and more people can pursue what reinforces their skills and highly unique intelligence. In Jordan’s case, he worked unceasingly to become the best basketball player in the world. Why then must we insult his remarkable achievements by pretending that they were achievable in concert with boning up on a national politics? It insults Jordan not one iota to say that just as 99.9999% of policy types couldn’t knowledgeably discuss the Bulls’ triangle offense, neither could Jordan (particularly in 1990) have knowledgeably gone over the policy differences between Helms and Gantt.
Notable here is that Gantt is black. Implicit in all the harassing of Jordan then is that because Jordan was black like Gantt, and because Jordan was specifically black, that he must be a Democrat. Really? Why? Those ever eager to heap activism onto our heroes don’t just insult the endless effort that made them heroes. They also insult them by reducing their thinking to the must surface of thinking. “Don’t think for yourself, young man, we’ll think for you.”
Good for Jordan for staying out of the Senate race, and too bad Barack Obama didn’t vigorously defend Jordan’s decision. Obama was naturally interviewed in this part of the documentary, and he lightly criticized Jordan for not making his support for Gantt known. That’s a shame. Obama could have approached the subject in truly elder statesman fashion by defending Jordan’s pursuit of his craft, rejecting celebrity as something that automatically makes one politically knowledgeable, plus he could have asked a simple question: why do we insult black heroes so thoroughly by reflexively assuming they’re incapable of independent thought such that they’ll automatically support the black candidate, particularly if this individual is a Democrat? Opportunity missed for Obama.
Back to basketball, brilliant as Jordan was as a player, he couldn’t win on his own. What helped set the stage for Jordan to become World Champion in addition to the world’s greatest player was the drafting of Scottie Pippen out of Central Arkansas University in 1987. While Jordan played college basketball at the bluest of blue blood schools; UNC easily the greatest feeder of talent to the NBA of any school, Pippen reached the NBA the hard way.
In his case, he wasn’t even on Central Arkansas’s team right away. He was equipment manager. But he figured out a way, and grew, and became great. Pippen is a reminder of many things, but one of them is that there’s no such thing as discrimination based on color or education in the most capitalistic, meritocratic of industries. In the NBA it’s all about winning for the best franchises, which means that they’ll find you and draft you regardless of your origins if it’s assumed you can contribute. Pippen did in Hall of Fame fashion.
Notable is that it wasn’t just Pippen who emerged from humble origins. So did Nike. Not only did co-founder Phil Knight spend most nights for the first eighteen years of Nike’s existence worried that the next day would be the company’s last, by the time Jordan entered the NBA in 1984, Nike was still a running shoe company. And it had no stature in the world of basketball.
As The Last Dance makes plain, Jordan didn’t even want to visit Nike to hear the company’s pitch. Converse was the shoe of the NBA back in the ‘80s, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson (among others) wore the company's product, and that was the point. Converse already had the stars and was not going to place Jordan at the top of the proverbial pyramid. Adidas in the early ‘80s was still the premiere shoe brand overall, but their response to Jordan was that they weren’t going to build a shoe line around him.
Nike saw what others didn’t, only for the world’s most popular athlete to help make Nike one of the world’s most popular brands. About the ascent of athlete and company, it should be stressed yet again that Jordan initially had no interest in Nike. This matters as a reminder that the present in commerce rarely predicts the future. For those who believe anti-trust law serves a purpose, see Jordan and Nike. Adidas was the dominant company then. It isn’t now. By the time anti-trust officials discover dominance, readers can rest assured the latter is being competed away.
And for those who think the Fed’s monetary machinations are the source of fake stock-market vitality, see Nike yet again. Stock market rallies are invariably led by very few companies; most of these companies much less than blue chip at the rally’s beginning. To pretend as so many do that the Fed is behind rising equity markets is to pretend that the limp minds at the central bank can not only engineer equity price surges, but they can do so while putting the past out to pasture in favor of the future. In 1984, Nike was on the radar screens of few, while Adidas was everyone’s blue chip. How things change. If Fed officials were capable of creating this change, rest assured they wouldn’t work at the Fed.
Jordan was a big fan of cigars as viewers of The Last Dance know. Maybe he still is. In particular, Jordan’s cigar brand of choice back in his playing days was Cohiba. Cohiba is a Cuban cigar. That it’s Cuban requires mention when it’s remembered that by the 1980s, the U.S. trading embargo was already decades old.
Jordan’s choice of cigar shows how pointless these embargoes are. While countries don’t trade as is, their attempts to limit exchange are ultimately symbolic. If you’re producing something with known market value, then you’re trading with everyone. Cuban cigars remain the gold standard for cigar aficionados, and a lover of them like Jordan was only going to smoke the best. Who knows from whom Jordan purchased them, at which point it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that when it comes to trade, there’s no accounting for the final destination of any good.
This is worth thinking about now in consideration of attempts by witless American politicians to limit U.S. technology sales to “China,” and Huawei specifically. “National security” is trotted out as the reason for these actions, but the underlying reason is protectionism. Huawei may be the fastest communications company when it comes to rolling out 5G services, and some economically illiterate politicians think the Chinese leading in 5G will harm the U.S. In truth, it only will if the Chinese aren’t capable of offering the said-to-be amazing technology stateside. If they do make it available, Americans will be improved by the technology as though it had been produced in Spokane. The beauty of open markets is that we have the whole world competing to meet our needs. If the Chinese reach 5G first, brilliant. What harms Americans is a lack of access to market goods, not the origin of them. Well over 99% of Americans don’t live in Menlo Park, but that bit of reality doesn’t mean they’re harmed that Facebook is based in Menlo.
Taking this further, a man by the name of Aiqi Sun is presently translating The Last Dance into Chinese. It seems China is the NBA’s most lucrative foreign market. Yes, it’s true. This symbol of American capitalism, sports, plus a reminder of how American leagues tend to crown champions of same World Champions, is incredibly popular in China. American politicians, pundits and policy theorists routinely offer up rationales for “getting tough on China,” but in consideration of how much Chinese consumers drive U.S. corporate profits, attempts to weaken China amount to the weakening of America’s greatest businesses.
All of which brings us to the most important theme of The Last Dance: Jordan held grudges. Big time. Grudges energized him. If an opponent or a team dared dismiss his game, the Chicago Bulls team, or if an opposing player dared to score lots of points against him, Jordan used the slights as fuel. Slights real, perceived, and even made up pushed Jordan to greater and greater heights. “Made up” is mentioned simply because it turns out Washington Bullet LaBradford Smith didn’t say to the great Michael Jordan something along the lines of “Good game, Mike.” But since Smith had the temerity to score easily and often against Jordan one night, the world’s greatest player made sure to create a slight where there wasn’t one as fuel for the next matchup between the two, and during which Jordan torched the now largely forgotten Smith.
In short, what made the extraordinarily good Jordan great was competition. Endless amounts of competition, along with extraordinary amounts of work to ensure that those who presumed to compete with Jordan would never measure up to him. Rather than try to weaken those who aimed to breathe his rare air, Jordan relied on the competition to make him better. Let’s remember this now. It's the most important economic lesson of all in a documentary full of them: when we seek to neuter the Chinese, and anyone else who strives for greatness, we neuter ourselves. China can’t shrink us by growing, but it can surely shrink us if it declines.
