The sports world is revisiting the Jordan Bulls in rapt attention over the next few weeks thanks to “The Last Dance” on ESPN, and having just come out of another NBA dynasty, it would have come as no surprise if another such film was in the works on the Light Years Warriors.
However, according to Mark Medina of USA TODAY, don’t expect it. Despite being co-owned by Mandalay Entertainment executive and movie producer Peter Guber, the Warriors last year opted out of the type of intrusive access Chicago allowed during the 1997-98. But it wasn’t for a lack of interest.
“Once you do that, you actually affect the outcome of other things,” Guber told Medina. “Turning the camera on with an expectation that you’re going to get to a particular point with a sports team or career or something like that? It’s a dangerous business. It’s hubris.”
Makes total sense, right? It’s not as if these Warriors ever engaged in hubris of any sort. They surely never proclaimed to be “light years” ahead of the competition, actively embraced the villain role that came with fielding a veritable cheat code of a roster, or played the part of showboats on the court.
When you consider that, in fact, the Warriors did all of those things and even amidst the franchise’s worst season in over a decade, they still played up the opening of the Chase Center in downtown San Francisco and found a way to turn the D’Angelo Russell experiment into the NBA trade deadline’s biggest moment, it’s a legitimate surprise that they turned down the chance to chronicle their greatness in a film. Doing so maybe could have been seen as some sort of hubris — Michael Jordan was certainly not short on that — but when did that ever stop these guys before?
Still, while Guber and his franchise shied away from behind-the-scenes access for NBA Entertainment or ESPN producer Mike Tollin (an executive producer on “The Last Dance” and a business partner of Guber’s), the franchise isn’t shutting the door completely on such a project.
Said Guber: “Then you go back and try to paint the painting of it with a film or documentary afterwards, rather than say, ‘Let’s capture it now because we’re going to win nine championships in a row or something like that.’ I don’t think you can do that. I don’t think that’s a good undertaking. It will affect what you are doing.”