From then until now, the project had starts and stops, Silver told USA TODAY Sports. At one time, Spike Lee was in talks to direct the project. For almost a year, there were conversations with Danny DeVito to produce. And there were discussions with Ross Greenburg, the one-time president of HBO Sports, and film producer Frank Marshall, a longtime business partner of Steve Spielberg. But Jordan also needed to be comfortable with the timing of the release, and Silver said, “I used to joke with Michael over the years about it. I think one of the reasons it didn’t get done over those years was because he was not all that excited about it happening. He’s remained a very private person over the years, and with a longer perspective on his career, he was able to come to terms with it. “You see a side of Michael that everyone around the NBA was aware of. He has such a polished image, and there’s nothing in this that’s unpolished. But you see a raw Michael and how incredibly competitive he is. There’s a roughness to that and that may surprise a lot of people.”