Luc Longley call to Michael Jordan buried the hatchet over The Last Dance snub

We didn’t hear from Michael Jordan about Luc Longley in The Last Dance but there’s clearly no lingering resentment between the former NBA stars.

In a two-part series for Australian Story, Longley revealed he was “bummed” about being excluded from the documentary that captivated the world last year about Jordan and the all-conquering Chicago Bulls of the 1990s.

“I didn’t expect to be a heavy feature in it because they hadn’t interviewed me, but I did expect to be in it more than I was,” Longley told the ABC earlier this month.

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While the Aussie basketball cult hero didn’t feature back then, Jordan was more than happy to help when asked to play a part in telling his story on TV Down Under — and all it took was a phone call.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports Longley called Jordan to ask if he would be interviewed by Australian Story producers for the piece and the Bulls legend agreed without hesitating.

In the series, whose final episode went to air earlier this week, Jordan said he regrets not featuring Longley more prominently in The Last Dance when so many other players — think Steve Kerr, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman — all enjoyed plenty of exposure.

“If I look back and could change anything, that’s probably what I would have changed,” Jordan said in part one.

In part two, Jordan paid tribute to Longley, stressing his importance on both a team and individual level.

Longley didn’t get the recognition he thought he deserved in The Last Dance.Source:AFP

“He matters to me. He does matter to me and his story needs to be told,” Jordan said. “Sure, there’s some good and there’s some bad but that’s all a part of life.

“You’re going to have friends that you have good and bad things about but we shared a lot. We competed together and I would take him any day of the week if I had to go through a competition again.

“If you asked me to do it all over again, there’s no way I would leave Luc Longley off my team — no way possible, because he mattered.

“He had an impact on me. He made me better as a player, as a person.”

Longley admitted he had a somewhat frosty relationship with Jordan during their time as teammates in Chicago, as the greatest basketballer of all time felt he needed to push the Aussie big man harder to get the best out of him.

“He just had all these sharp edges, like some sort of a ninja star,” Longley said of Jordan.

“He felt for whatever reason like he needed to charge me with his electricity (but) I’m not a conduit for that kind of electricity naturally.

“I might not have been a killer like MJ was, but you don’t need 12 killers.

“You need a group of humans that appreciate, understand, push and pull, work together. And we definitely achieved that.”

The Dream Team.Source:News Corp Australia

But Longley said the pair’s relationship has thawed in their post-playing days and developed into an amicable friendship — proven by the fact Jordan was happy to take Longley’s call and agree to be interviewed.

“Interestingly, MJ and I, our exchanges now are really friendly and warm,” Longley said. “Now that we’re not playing together, there’s room for that.”

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