Tag: Roland Lazenby

Roland Lazenby: But I held no delusion …

Roland Lazenby: But I held no delusion that I would be interviewed for this docu-series 22 years later or that any of the original interview footage with me would actually make the show. Yet it was also obvious that my work (along with the fine work of so many people covering the Bulls back then) had heavily influenced the production. That’s why it has been so nice and generous for Jason Hehir, the director, to take the time to publicly acknowledge my work. That can’t have pleased MJ. But the great success of Hehir’s work, beyond all of the narrative story-telling, has been his effort to encourage Jordan and his people toward a frank telling of his own story. After all, let’s be clear. This is MJ’s life, his story. It is he who has made all of this possible.

Roland Lazenby: One person who is not a …

Roland Lazenby: One person who is not a fan of it is Michael himself. He has been cordial enough in and around it. When I decided to do the project, I went to him immediately and told him about it. He spoke briefly to me but I could sense that he was leery. When the book came out, the PR staff of his Charlotte Hornets treated me extremely well. In fact, I’ve always been kind of a secondary, almost unimportant, figure working around NBA teams, often occupying remote press seats (but having the same interview access as other representatives of large media corporations). So I was taken aback after the book came out when the Hornets PR staff assigned me preferred seating at a home game and afterward Jordan awkwardly shook my hand. Since then, however, Jordan’s top assistant has made it clear just how displeased MJ was with me.

Roland Lazenby: What happened was Kobe …

Roland Lazenby: What happened was Kobe wasn’t even thinking about – I mean he liked Michael Jordan but he did think to be exactly like Jordan with shaving his head and all that stuff, that was because Adidas discovered him and thought that he could be the next Jordan and told his AAU coach that. They began pushing that agenda and suddenly what do you do when you have a 16 year old kid and you tell him he’s going to be the next Jordan? Well next thing you know he’s shaving his head, he’s studying the tapes, you know if that’s going to be his job he’d better know what it is. And so then everybody was saying that Kobe was some kind of – I don’t know what the problem was with Kobe, but it was negative. If you recall even in Philly it was negative. Like he was trying to jump line.

Roland Lazenby: I think that’s probably …

Roland Lazenby: I think that’s probably sort of the attitude; Kobe and his family was trying to jump line at the cafeteria or something you know? They thought that he was trying to jump in front of people. I know Rick Fox told me that. When Kobe came to the Lakers as a teenager, you know there’s all these veterans working hard for their money and here’s this kid being shoved in front of us and so it created – and he never once bothered to say, ‘Man I wasn’t planning any of this, this stuff just happened to me’… he was granted by working as hard as he did, smart as he was, but he wasn’t out there schemin’…