The Rodman 30 For 30

I need to watch it again - probably with fewer beers in me - but I thought Tuesday night's 30 For 30 on Dennis Rodman might be one of the best I've seen.

I wonder how we'd all react to a figure like Rodman today in pro sports.

I wonder if that entire documentary was a two-hour example of what clinical depression unchecked for 40-plus years looks like.

And I wonder how long it'll be before I'll see anything as raw and harrowing as the last 90 seconds of Rodman's comments that close the film.

 

What did he say?

 

Basically that he was to blame for whatever has happened in his life. And if he died tomorrow he would take off his demons with him.

His final quote was something like "I'm one of the most recognizable people on this Earth. I should be happy right?.... (long pause, he wipes his eyes a bit)...Weird shit."

I remember seeing it the first time around. It's excellent. I don't know how we'd treat a figure like Rodman these days. I mean a lot of these young kids have a gimmick and earn media notoriety through their gimmick and social media and stuff. Rodman was a fucking great basketball player first and then, as he career went along, he became this character. I think one of the reasons he's fascinating is because he was a great player. Now these kids bypass the accomplishments to get to the TMZ stuff.

 

It was hard to watch. My memories of Rodman were all based on what he did on the court. The freakouts that came later were easy to dismiss as stunts for attention.

As a fellow fan remarked at the time, "That boy is just lost." The fan in question was/is a parent and foster parent. At the time, she saw the same thing I saw, an adult who had never grown past being a troubled kid. It is easy to look at his story and see the kind of rootlessness a lot of children in the system exhibit. The system for him was not any kind of CPS. It was whatever conference or league he played in at time. One thing Scottie Pippen and a few others noted was how he tried to turn the Pistons and later the Bulls into the defacto family with parents he felt he needed.

What is most tragic to me is how he missed out on being a parent himself in his search for finding someone to parent him.

Thinking back on the documentary, I thought the story of the Oklahoma family who took him in was troubling. Given that the final blow-up between him and the mom was over her use of the N-word during an argument, I wonder how much casual racism he heard while he stayed there and why he continued to tolerate it for so long, especially when he had a dorm and a community that might have been more receptive at the school. I get that it was rural Oklahoma and things were probably far from perfect on campus, but it seemed like the family kept or tolerated him as a sort of pet. Am I misremembering this?

 

I have always thought he had some sexual identity, gender, etc. issues. Whatever they may be. For a young black male that would have been pretty hard to deal with and I believe he had a very unstable family life. Sometimes I think he is the biggest jackass but I feel sorry for him. Probably has lots of enablers.

 

I'll have to check this one out. 30 for 30 kind of slipped from my radar, because the old thread on here stopped getting updated when new movies came out, and obviously at ESPN, its original champions are no longer with the company. At least from James Miller's past reporting, that usually means the initiative gets less attention and push, even if it's still a slam dunk from a content perspective.

 

I didn't even know this was on. Debuting on a random Tuesday in December is weird.

 

ESPN+ is supposed to have the entire catalog. I watched Pat XO the other night and plan on watching the 84/85 Bears doc if work calms down.

 

Also - The 30 for 30 podcast series is really well done, if you haven't had the chance to check that out. Most of the episodes aren't time-sensitive, so they're still worth listening to now.

 

It debuted September 10. Not that a random Tuesday in September is less weird, but they're just replaying it now.

 

I had to rewatch this with all the discussion in here since I hadn't seen it since September.

The Pistons were truly Rodman's family, probably the closest thing he's had to a family to this date. And as much as Isiah get clowned on from time to time, I do believe he really cares about Rodman and him breaking down seem to come from a real place. Chuck Daly definitely seemed to embrace being a father figure to Rodman, he knew that Rodman needed that male figure to look up to and he wanted to be that guy. I think Phil Jackson certainly liked and respected Rodman for what he brought on the court, but he also looked at him from more in a cerebral way than someone that had an emotional attachment.

I have no doubt he was on the verge of suicide when he went to the Palace in 1993. I guess he's since admitted it and Craig Sager helped talk him out of it.

He's still a compelling figure. Still seems like he's searching to find a place that he belongs, especially now that he doesn't have basketball to turn to. Most of the recent 30 for 30s have done nothing for me, but this one was pretty good and it felt like he put it all out there for everyone to know.