Luc Longley and the 'missing chapter' of the Last Dance | Full documentary | Australian Story

[Music] luke longley is a guy you couldn't miss he's he's seven foot two if he stood in front of you you wouldn't see the sun he's an enormous character my size came from mum and dad dad's six ten mum six four i was always going to be big everybody stares because he's that much bigger kids will open mouth you know and parents will pretend they haven't seen him but they will and you know they'll get back in the car and go you would not believe what i thought i saw a genuine giant today it's huge like his head was going up the top over the supermarket shelves tall has ergonomic challenges for sure so i'm always redesigning cars and boats and houses to fit my size [Music] beds have to get custom-made beds clothes when i was a teenager i just was so embarrassed by the clothes that i could wear oh there we go there weren't very many choices oh she gets me in the shoulders just not quite in the arms yeah it makes me furious now i look at the teenagers and their jeans are all halfway up their calves because that's cool well mine were like that in the 80s and 90s but it wasn't cool [Music] long before i knew how he'd processed his fame and his great success and the riches he made i admired how well he'd process being what he termed a giant a freak [Music] i remember once we went out to this pub and the bouncer starts yelling out at luke get off the bloody chair or i'll kick you out of here and lou you know very graciously i'm sorry mate i'm not on a chair anyway the bouncer comes over and goes jesus christ i wouldn't trade it i like being tall i've certainly got me a long way in basketball i know i wouldn't have been anywhere near the nba if i hadn't been seven foot two i'm a realist about that luke had a gift given to him by the maker upstairs but he took the leap and all of his success was through his own doing luke did all the hard work [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] luke longley was the pioneer for basketball in australia in the sense that he was the first to go to the nba and he remains the only australian to win multiple titles in the nba he was the starting center for three years on the greatest team of all time the chicago bulls have won their sixth nba championship and it's their second three-peat there was nothing like the chicago bulls of 96 to 98. i don't i don't know what you would compare it to the beatles in the mid 60s the rolling stones when mick jagger was at his height that may never come along again for centuries he may never ever see anything like that we won't i felt that luke was a little bit of a fish out of water coming into the culture the nba culture luke was a very gentle nice person by nature to be more of um of an intimidator to knock somebody down none of that was luke's demeanor i was a gentle and empathetic young kid who had to figure out how to discard some of the gentleness and adopt adopt some mj if you like i don't think luke had the mentality of what it took to win and you know you want to see that frustration you want to see a little bit of anger you want to dominate you know and there's times where i had to push him on that you had to show him a little tough love you know that's what i call it tough love he took a lot a lot of heat from michael but he was also respected by michael so he fit right into the group and became a mainstay you know for for that entire era i feel like basketball's given me an awful lot and it's also cost me a fair bit in a lot of ways i had to change an awful lot of who i was in order to really do the job and coming out of that i think i learned that not all that suited me very well and it's taken me quite a long time to acknowledge that quite a long time to unpick it and i'm still unlearning [Music] sounds like the first question in a session with a psychologist doesn't it tell me about your childhood um i grew up in fremantle at that stage was a interesting port town that has a combination of fishing village and then starting to be occupied by sort of alternative people it's a different free over the one we grew up in isn't it yeah it has been 30 years since they cleaned freo up yeah so i'm the oldest of three boys we tend to run a bit as a pack do you want me to get like a wheelchair or chair or some special device thank you bro okay we lived in what was essentially a warehouse building and we were the first family in that part of town [Music] we grew up around artists and academics and architects and then we go to the southern anchor at lunch time in our school bags it was a different time you can count on grip with no kids to play with it was just us boys and so as boys will we roamed we roamed everywhere one minute we're at the end of a jetty spear fishing the next minute we're climbing up a roof in a warehouse it was very different it was unusual i definitely grew up a gentle person i wasn't a tough kid didn't need to be i was um more of a creative kid grew up in a relatively creative environment dad and mum were alternative but i mean dad was an architect we weren't they weren't full hippies but they were definitely doing something different to any other kid i knew i suppose i was a bit destined i mean i grew up on basketball courts mum and dad were good basketballers they both played and they played at really high levels particularly dad he had a really quite an extraordinary career in his time when i was pregnant i would be at richard's basketball games and i often wondered if the pounding of the the ball and the running of the feet on the court kind of went into him in utero in some way he saw what i was doing so it was almost a faint accompli luke was identified pretty early as having considerable basketball talent and he was picked for the under-14s team when he was about 12. but he was dropped because he'd been fooling around in practice i was that kid that was never that reliable um because it wasn't big on the palliative things i wanted to be an underwater architect i was busy thinking about that first time i saw luke play basketball was at the australian under 18 championships in queensland he would have been about 16 years of age at that time and he was very tall and awkward but you could see enormous potential and so i recruited him to come to canberra the next year on a scholarship the institute of sport basketball program is dedicated to young people like these to give them the opportunities to play for australia and further their basketball career i think one of the pivotal points when luke was young was the separation of his parents he was visibly affected was confused was angry and i think he became overnight independent grew up had to and felt like he was gonna take the next steps by himself and that's when you know he went off to the institute i thought that he really was going there because he wanted a bit of distance and to sort of just not be quite so close to the chaos that was happening at home when you're in a family that's that's splitting you don't know what the rules are anymore whereas in a in a game everything is laid out for you so you know exactly what's going on [Music] i never planned for basketball to be a big deal in my life i didn't expect that it would be i stumbled into it however it provided me with a family when mine was broken down and i think that became my sort of loving focus almost like that's what i sort of poured myself into [Applause] [Music] anyone who's seven foot tall and pretty well coordinated you'd have to say had a very big chance to be a very good basketball player that was my take on him the question mark was whether he'd have the attitude and determination and will to to excel at the game [Music] i wasn't serious i wasn't down in the gym like all the other guys people around at that stage would have said oh he's not gonna make it he doesn't want it badly i would say luke is an accidental superstar he was never driven to be a basketball person we both went to the us for college and i like to think i had a little bit of a hand in how we got there because new mexico were recruiting me at the stage luke was back in perth and the scouts came to see andy vlahoff the coach comes out to visit me here guy called gary coulson i told him about my friend luke and i told luke to meet me down at the at the basketball centre i don't know why he asked me to come along maybe to expose me to them maybe he needed a foil for him to look good against because i was still just bouncing around having a bit of fun and um i walk in with gary colson and luke's just come off the beaches and he bought his bare foot seven foot uh 16 year old gary coulson's jaw dropped pretty much forgot about me and when i need this guy [Music] gary coulson eventually offered him a scholarship and the rest is history then luke went to new mexico for a college career [Music] [Applause] that was sort of a stupid curiosity and a luster adventure and a free ticket to america and i saw the movie animal house and toga parties look like fun and i just thought great i'm going to go and have a go at all that the main thing in the albuquerque sports wise is the university basketball team the university of new mexico lobos the biggest lobo of them all was having the hardest time big seven foot freshman luke longley admits he's a little bit out of condition oh i suppose i'm just lazy no i think it's a lot to do with fitness um we didn't have a very good team attitude that game we didn't play very well there's some footage somewhere of a journalist asking me why i had a bad practice when i first got there and i said oh i'm lazy i suppose ha ha like that was my big joke so they crucified me a bit for that [Music] when luke was recruited by new mexico he was very green he didn't know the game very well but he has really good hands for a guy his size he can shoot the ball he can pass the ball and he can defend by the time i realised that i actually really loved playing basketball i was on the olympic team in 88 that's when i went hang on this is real like i actually could be pretty good at this if the names luke longley and andrew vlahove don't mean anything to you now they soon will they have just been selected in the australian boomers team to go to the seoul olympic games [Music] the 88 olympics were a turning point for luke he was in i think about the second year of college at new mexico and i picked him in that team he was only 19 at the time very controversial a lot of people hadn't seen him didn't know him 88 was good because they played with the innocence of youth [Music] yeah it was joyous we finished fourth which was australia's highest ever finish but yeah it was clear to everyone that probably luke was on a different trajectory to anyone else [Applause] [Applause] when luke went back to new mexico after the olympics we all sat down and mapped out a way to go for him to to go to the nba i just felt this massive boost of confidence and energy and i poured all that into my basketball i cared about my teammates more than i cared about winning so therefore winning became how to reward them so that's part of i think what drove me to be good concerning the tense time lobos the new mexico lobos the college team are the biggest show in town luke was their biggest star and he was this seven foot two australian with flowing red hair and a different perspective on on basketball on the world i think they could feel that so he was a big star and a very big fish in a very small pond [Music] i'm in the papers all the time and every time i did something they'd go mad [Music] [Applause] my confidence just went through the roof and i can talk to girls all of a sudden i remember spotting kelly who ended up being my wife and thinking she was the prettiest girl i'd ever seen and plucking up the courage to talk to her kelly had a hairdressing business and she grew up in albuquerque go right into each other straight away i got my phone number from my friend and called my housemat for three weeks and he came over for dinner and that night we went to the pit where the lobos played and we went to my salon where i cut off his mullet the famous red mullet i was like this is not right but his accent his height i just fell she was very tough so she was tougher than me like she had a real street smart tour barra that was attractive to me because i didn't have that and she was independent and she was confident and why wouldn't you fall in love with that [Music] after luke made the decision in his third year at college to go to the nba i think it really all happened he got stronger more serious about the game in basketball there is one league which towers over every other league and that's the nba and at that point the nba was becoming a global phenomenon i started getting told that there was nba scouts in the stands that they were looking at me i mean and i had been playing great and beating guys who end up in the nba so i knew by then i believed in myself one nba scout claims that the seven footer with the flowing red hair has the potential to be australia's best chance of becoming a millionaire in the lucrative national basketball association in the united states it's almost like an algorithm you know you put in the right variables seven foot smart strong good guy high iq you're going to get drafted and the 1991 nba draft has moved to the big arena here at madison square garden the americans always make a big party around the draft because it's the introduction of of new blood into their sport and and the way the nba historically creates their level playing field is to offer the best possible athlete coming through the college system to the worst possible teams all the players go to new york and there's a big thing in madison square garden and media and attention with the seventh pick in the 1991 nba draft the minnesota timberwolves select luke longley from the university of new mexico big pick seven basically in a sense says he was the seventh best player in american collegiate basketball that year so so that's an impressive acknowledgement nobody from australia has ever really made it big or made it in the nba that opened up the eyes of the australians because we tended to regard the nba as something they played on another planet it wasn't it was out beyond our reach [Music] when i got to minnesota we were bad we won 17 games out of i think 82 the first year i was there that was the most miserable year of my life i hated it i moved up there and it was the frozen tundra it was so cold i'd never seen that kind of cold and left my family my friends my business teammates i'll got on with a few of them but there wasn't a love in locker room it was competitive which is good competitive is fine but i didn't feel at all i wasn't enjoying it people don't share the ball people don't defend as well for each other and all that sort of stuff was what really appealed to me more than whether or not even whether or not we lost it funnily enough again what's up camera time brothers man just crack it down lonely they weren't sure about his australian laid-back attitude and i think it took a bit of his confidence no what do you think of lukeway well let's see he shows his emotion and i could see him he was running down the court and that was heavy i knew that he was just really hating it my game from college didn't translate in the nba i hated it but they had given me a million dollar signing bonus i was the first australian to make it i had to succeed i went back at it and sort of redesigned myself a little bit and i said no that wasn't good enough let's have another run at this which which tools should i pick up and beat myself up with and so i i re-engaged in the weight room and even watched videotape of how the good guys were doing it picked up a few more tools you know developed a little hook shot that i didn't have i started to play more confidence and the general manager of the team trader jack they called him because he's always trading players so he was rubbing his hands together saying great we can finally get something for this australian kid who hasn't been very good because he's finding some finding some juice and we can trade for him [Applause] we watched him through his rookie season i liked his game i liked his size i liked the fact that he was a really good passer that he was a teammate yeah it was his bulk more than anything else his size he's a big guy in the nba you can get traded any time before middle of the season you get traded you get a call from your agent you've got to be in the next town the next day you call your wife pack up the house and you fly to wherever it is it happens quick we got the phone call we've got good news and bad news but the bad news is you're being traded the good news is you're being traded to chicago to the bulls i think i was about four or five months pregnant with claire and luke was on a flight and gone got my plane the next morning flew to chicago super excited and got to practice and straight away felt like i was home they shared the ball and they were genuinely excited when you did well they needed him for what he could bring and he was able to provide what they needed he would absorb the blows physically from the other team and i think that's what the bulls needed most strong rebounds [Applause] people ask me how did you end up winning three championships well i got traded to chicago it was the first part and um and lots of lucky stuff after that at 219 centimeters or seven feet two luke longley was highly intimidated by some members of the press gallery my wife is a lot happy to be around me since i've been with chicago mostly because winning basketball games a lot more fun than losing when i got to chicago they had just won three world championships in a row and michael jordan who will call mj from now on he's dad died and he had an existential moment and decided to play baseball so when i got there there was a michael jordanless team obviously he's never going to be as good without the best player in the world but we're still pretty competitive still with phil jackson coaching still with scottie pippen at the helm me and luke really bonded he's a a bit of a joker to some degree like myself so me and him was able to hit it right off the only unusual thing that struck me about him was his accent that became something um for me to get get used to a bit you know he comes to chicago and plays for one of the great coaches ever and phil jackson and and now it starts to make sense phil loved luke and luke adored phil i mean there was an instant connection i think luke looked up to him as that's a father figure i always felt like uh it's hard for a big man to be a part of basketball because somewhere in the back your mind you feel like well just because i'm big i'm i'm a basketball player rather than proficient or skilled but look at a lot more than he's willing to admit [Music] he was very adept at what he needed to do to be part of the team he was a pass first guy which was important here's the give-and-go only to harper it's beautiful phil was talking my language and talking calmly and slowly not yelling at me like all the other coaches had he managed to make me believe that i was great so he put greece on the tracks if you like you can't tell luke to do something you can't say luke do this because he's going to be resistant against commands you have to tell him look tell yourself you can do this and you know that became one of the methods that i used to talk to luke about maybe scoring being more aggressive we started to get rumors that mj was thinking about coming back he started hanging around at practice a little bit first it was just watching from the gallery upstairs you could see him hanging out up there i had never spoken to him and suddenly he was at practice fighting with scotty and barking orders and he wasn't even part of the team he just came and took over practice when jordan decides to come back you know with his celebrity and his name and his fame and everything it became the biggest story united states might have been one of the biggest stories in the world today michael jordan at age 32 tries to accomplish what no one else truly has in team sports history i was anxious to understand who my teammates were uh my mindset was to go you know try to get back and win so you have to be prepared you got to be ready to play when michael comes back it's uh amped up tenfold um just the intensity and the the awareness of what's coming so i think it took some time for luke to adapt and adjust michael in the air dumped underneath longley goes up missed it luke and uh other players they felt like that they were walking on exhales he just had all these sharp edges like some sort of a ninja star you would assume that everybody had the same mentality as i had strive for perfection each and every time you step on the basketball court but unfortunately everybody don't have that same mentality but i had a mission you know i wanted them to understand what it took to win you know and winning has a price and i'm pretty sure there were times they were not happy with me but you know as a leader you you know you sometimes you're not going to be well liked uh you're not going to be you know but you have to pull them along michael was uh demanding teammate he wanted you to be as aggressive as he was second was not good enough it just wasn't for him and the next thing that happened was you know we lose a couple of games and they start looking around for people to blame so i get blamed for a loss here blame for lost there is look good enough you know can he do it all that sort of stuff which was i was curious about as well am i good enough for this team like how am i gonna how am i gonna make this work so search around for more tools hammer myself into a different shape michael wrote him a lot pushed him and controlled him and criticized him and with not a lot of encouragement just like toughen up and you've got a job to do do your job and this is what i need you to do if we're going to win he may not like this story um in 98 we're playing the utah jazz the first quarter ends luke has 12 points four blocks and four rebounds and i go to luke i said that's how you can play man you do that we dominate we up by 16 at the end of the game luke had 12 points four rebounds and four blocks we're winning by 16 we lose by 15. and i just looked at luke and i said you know what luke that is the last time i'm gonna give you a compliment in the middle of the game there was times where mike would get pissed off at luke and luke feels deeply and that disappointment you know of letting down a teammate it affected him i knew he was capable we all felt he was capable but you have to be capable every single night for us to maintain success so i pushed him obviously i did and verbally you know i would challenge him in certain situations where i felt like you know look you just you're not you're not doing what we expect you to do it was a mindset that i felt like luke had to learn and i think he did learn he'll say oh luke wasn't this and luke wasn't that so i i made him listen i made him that and i'll say well you know what may or may not be true 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 you know michael's point is we won so it worked we did it my way and it worked you know if we did it your way it might not have worked the bulls needed michael jordan to be successful no doubt in my mind i was still that kid from freo who was reshaping himself and mj was three-time world champion best player on the planet had his own shoes and there was me and it was him and somewhere between us was the rest of the team and we had to figure out how to be together and it wasn't his priority but it was mine i'm deeply thankful to mj for showing me how to be a better basketballer for compensating for my weaknesses with his brilliance you don't have to love a bloke to be on his team to care about him to play basketball together i didn't love mj i thought mj was difficult and unnecessarily harsh on his teammates and probably on himself and i think you know i just didn't enjoy being around him that much and that was cool it was cool the mj was cool with me there was no the end of the day we found a way to respect each other on the court and to co-exist and that was cool [Music] when we're winning championships obviously everyone was in on the marketing thing even people were doing babushka dolls and then one day we found the one with me on as the big as the big dog usually had mj on the outside so we grabbed this one it's getting old now like the varnish is coming off i think it's just i think it's a spitting image and then so if we line us up in order of importance then mj of course he's pretty important scotty do that make scotty the next most important we have a a very good relationship both on and off the basketball court and that's just how we evolved and became friends for now almost going on 30 years so dennis he was having an egg yolk hair day obviously he had lots of wild hair days [Music] [Applause] i loved dennis i tended to roll with dennis a bit after the game and ended up in some places that i wouldn't have otherwise ended up in which i put in the in the life experience bag my favorite is a little baby's teeth little precious teeth hello steve put steve up here with me he would like to be there there you go luke and i hit it off right away we would barbecue at each other's homes and our kids would play together and it was just an absolutely beautiful time of life that's our order of importance now you can go there there we go so how how did it really go in in real life back then the real social hierarchy was obviously something like that these are all jumbled down here and these are the three rock stars and they were i mean these guys are hall of fame great players and the rest of us down here found nice roles to win championships and that's the truth [Music] luke was a really important piece of the jigsaw puzzle that was the chicago bulls i mean michael jordan was obviously the most important part but luke was the starting center and you remember there's only five people on the court [Music] luke's job was to guard the opposing monster again the only man on shaquille shaquille o'neal was one of the most dominating big men's in our game so um it was important that we tried to have some some guys on the floor that could really uh meet checks in intensity i loved wrestling shack and i got lots of cracked ribs and busted teeth as a result but i loved it and phil and mj and pip and all those guys understood that that made us good there's a intimidation factor that goes into basketball and luke was a force that held his own he could take a blow and just keep going keep playing steady reliable wanted to pass wanted to help everybody else be better his strength was he could shoot you know he was very smart good passer he knew how to position himself well he had the skill set he made our team better you know his ability to see the floor and make passes steve hi hey guys he was important to the team and to each individual within the team so he had a lot of really strong relationships and that made him a natural connector for the group there's daddy merry christmas claire the teammates and their wives and the kids that that was our family hosting people bringing people over having a barbie just opening up his house that was all part of the ambiance that luke provided to the team to see these little girls together best friends you know running around in their pigtails and dresses and enjoying company and wine and in the midst of playing for this uh iconic franchise in a in an era where we're winning championships it was the time of our lives there was a real strong community there built around that michael wasn't totally included in it because of his isolation but everybody else was invited i wish you know i could have you know laid back and enjoyed it as much as everybody else but that that didn't guarantee us success you know that didn't say we're gonna win you know um you know so i had to do what i had to do [Music] [Applause] it was an amazing time to be part of the bulls during that run [Applause] every town there would be hundreds of people outside the hotel when we would arrive it felt like a traveling rock show we had so many different people in our locker room from one night to the next whether it was you know eddie vetter or hillary clinton or bill clinton this car is basketball it was beetle mania anywhere luke went there was crowds forming there was people calling out [Applause] everywhere the team went they were just absolutely mobbed [Applause] we would go into hotels often through the kitchens and up through the kitchen elevators because there'd be too many people outside and you'd use aliases i mean i was norman gunston for two years you couldn't even make a friend once they found out that luke played for the bulls it was impossible you couldn't trust anyone to be true it's so difficult to win an nba title because it's it really is a marathon you know you get through the regular season just to position yourselves for the playoffs and then it's like two months of incredible stress so during the three-year championship run it just got harder and harder each season luke longley is the first australian to win an american nba championship his team beating seattle today the first championship we were just on fire and we were fresh and no one knew what to do with us luke longley takes a unique place in australian sporting history i hope the people in australia are you know getting some of this footage and can see how much fun will happen because it's uh you know it's a first hopefully not last it's it's great second one people figured this out a bit our bodies were a little more beaten up it was a bit harder but still we expected to win that not since the boston celtics has any nba team reigned as supreme as the chicago bulls and there for the second successive year was australian luke longley the third one was really hard we were really beaten up we're starting to get a bit scratchy at each other because we've been living in this intense hub together for however long and it was made clear to us by management that this was our last season to get it so we got coined by phil that we would call this the last dance we've had this amazing run this is all you're going to get this is not going any further michael's not coming back this is the last dance the mba asked me if i would agree to having a television producer a camera guy travel with the team for that season because they anticipated what might happen this is kelly my wife that's when we opened up the locker room in our homes and that to his camera crew they're just meeting the girls do you know any of these guys have you seen them around before andy which ended up being the footage for the last dance by the third year it felt like we were running on fumes and we barely barely hung on we're not hunting anymore we're been being hunted we were sort of maxed out as a unit and so we literally just crawled across the line against utah in that third championship jordan opened the chicago bulls have won their sixth nba championship third one felt like i gave the last bit of my body for it i played my best basketball my life for it [Music] really after that championship you know i wasn't trying to take selfies with the celebrities in the locker room i wasn't out on the court high-fiving the fans i just found a quiet corner and just wanted to own that one for me these are my three championship rings and some people play their whole lives don't get one i stumbled into three thank you mj thank you mj once we understood how the players were on that team it clicked ultimately we got where we needed to go i mean it was teamwork it wasn't a one band it was teamwork they made me better as well yeah of course when i look at the rings it's it's cool i have a lot of good memories and it changed my life and the rings themselves are gaudy and ugly um yeah but the whole experience was kind of gorgeous ugly as well so they're perfect even though we knew the breakup was coming when it did hit it was really sort of bizarre you know to to all of a sudden be heading to different teams we all signed with different teams because of this bull situation he ended up getting you know a fabulous contract with the phoenix suns i did sign a big contract with phoenix which i struggled to live up to because my anchor was going bad but also just that there wasn't that same that magic around the group many of us struggled to find a new role with our teams i know that was the case for luke and phoenix and we all sort of longed for the chicago days where we had been living this incredible experience so it was it was a tough time for us i i think luke suffered from the expectations they want you to be who they need you to be not who you are and so they needed luke to be you know a big center who averaged you know 18 points and 10 rebounds and and that's not who he was claire stand next to lille for just a second i think we were just in shock and awe that everything was over in chicago and i think luke struggled a lot i think we were only there a year what a nice house the girls learned to swim and then we were off to new york new york same sort of thing it was quick turnover new guys just didn't have the same vibe i never really felt the same way about it and i was embarrassed that i was playing badly he just never got back to being the player that he was once he left chicago it was very difficult and injuries started to really take his toll his ankle was bone on bone and it was hard seeing him you know go through so much therapy and pain ankle specialists said can't believe you're even running on this you should stop playing straight away i still had two or three years on my contract and and um that was just devastating to me not just because my career was over but there was over in a moment where i was really not enjoying basketball and and not being able to perform very well and suddenly it was just all over we left new york and never went back we were going back to australia and that was it as i understand in the nba the contracts are guaranteed so if if a player is injured and can't continue their contract is honored longley still has three years left of his 60 million contract with the knicks and will be paid out if nba doctors rule him unfit to play luke was given the option to take an insurance payout but the proviso was that he could not play basketball ever again not being able to you know function as an nba player at that level at least hollow feeling in you [Music] the end of my career really felt like a fizz after those high years in chicago and that fizz hurt definitely when i came home i was deeply sad and i was depressed about it i'm depressed about the way it ended i just felt embarrassed i just didn't i didn't i didn't feel good about ending my career at all he's no longer an elite sportsman he's no longer at the center of the whirlwind he's no longer making a massive amount of money he's injured he's home and he's also again probably for the first time since he was 15 the only giant in the room you had to be a warrior you had to be tough you had to be strong and that's very different once you retire because now you're not a warrior i'll end up learning how to be competitive and being prepared to hit that guy to get what i want there's no doubt that it changed changed me it would change anyone [Music] i think the hardest thing for luke was building that armor that he needed to survive in that world and then that may actually come out what do you do with that [Music] there's a competitive drive that we have to somehow figure out how to channel it a different way when we leave the game in basketball the way to get better is to look critically at where you fail what you do wrong what you can do better and so over the course of 20 years i got quite good at that and so you go to bed at night thinking i'm going to do this better i'm going to do that better and if you're not careful you go to bed at night thinking i'm no good or i'm i'm not measuring up i'm not good enough i think it eroded me a lot as a person on the way through so that when i finished playing it was really hard to put down that athlete's mind to stop criticizing myself to stop looking for my own weaknesses what happened was to a certain extent that athlete's mind started panning around looking for other things to work on my ex-wife kelly would have probably say that it got pointed at her a bit or even the kids sometimes or friendships or and myself mostly i just couldn't live under someone telling me what to do all the time how are you feeling today i was being picked apart like he was i would rather be my own person than being picked apart it was pretty clear that his marriage um was in trouble and that was very painful to to to watch and um and when that all went to bits it was it was a very dark time for luke they had a good divorce they stayed civil they shared the care of their children and they did it did it well but never never easy did you hear that luke we've always been amicable we've always gotten along i know that he was the best dad and the best human being and i saw him go through the hardest times and he's he's a great man the only real shining light in my life at that stage was the kids and i put a lot of energy into the kids i'll clear the elbow in the shin played around spent lots of money on boats tried to find happiness in things you know bought some nice cars uh tried to have a bit of fun but never found anything to really plug back into and really make mine again going from being mid-career highly successful to being retired at 31 in some ways it sounds glorious right but also all your friends are working who do you hang out with how do you spend your time how do you enjoy that [Applause] i definitely didn't find purpose i knew that i wanted to not do something in basketball i just fell out of love with it i didn't want to be around it it's like an old girlfriend you know just didn't feel a love luke had this long period where he was alone and lonely and then he fell in love and he fell in love with a tiny person which was comical as love generally is [Music] the first time i laid eyes on him was at john curtin senior high school and i can remember he was sort of sliding down the handrail of the stairs and i remember he said we caught eyes and i just thought wow he's big they will actually they'll curl up and do lots of magic stuff they're huge well they'll be suitable for someone like you i knew anna growing up as a teenager i went to high school with her and she played in a band i used to go to pubs on the weekend and watch her sing no i'm working my i'm not small it's a squid angle but anna and luke getting together is kind of a lovely cute story i mean they both had earlier marriages and had beautiful kids they've kind of known each other all their lives except they had very different lives for 20 years hey google volume up around here it's funny because we were friends it was a bit of an awkward start i suddenly realised i liked him i never knew that i even had feelings for him but i was like oh this is a wonderful man sitting right in front of me and i thought wow he could just get snapped up like that it was just a friendship that blossomed into more yeah i don't know she's just good for me she's a good balance for me and she's helped me shift back towards who i feel like i really am i'm the feeder and i'm just trying to make you more unattractive to other women the first time i met anna was at our family home keep going it's working well at the time it was just dad claire and i living there and she came in and she's a pretty bright personality she's easy to go along with and jackson and elsie they were very similar ages elsie's my age jackson's my sister's age so it really became a brady bunch situation we end up moving in with luke when i was about 12. um we we all got on really well and everything was just so perfect it was so perfect and then i wake up in the middle of the night and you can hear everyone fire the converted warehouse was already well alight when fire crews arrived about three o'clock this morning we just woke up to lots of loud banging basically it sounded like someone was in the kitchen throwing pants around luke longley could only watch as fire destroyed the montreal street building i was asleep and heard a bang and explosion and um and it was it was already on fire and um you got the kids out [Applause] everything went nothing was left it was awful i felt like here i'm going to start again like i've started again after basketball starting after kelly i'd have to start again after the fire i felt like i was always starting again [Music] i was really at the bottom of my own emotional sort of reservoir and the boomers came to town for training camp and the coach said luke will you come down and just watch practice and tell me what you think i've got a couple of guys i'd like you to look at and i never forget walking to the gym and being almost embarrassed and almost like what am i doing here i don't belong this is my old stomping ground that's not me now and by the end of a week of going to that practice i felt reinvigorated and topped up again like i'd connected with something that was important to me that i'd been not connecting with for a long time i'm very happy to see luke you know get a job as an assistant coach one guy who i really helped i needed aaron baines i really enjoyed coaching him and that relationship along with the relationship with basketball just kind of lifted me out of where i was [Music] luke's first and foremost priority was to work with me and try and see if he could calm me down a little bit and you know from day one we kind of clicked he's not coming at you and attacking you he's trying to help you and build you up into a better person both on and off the court i tried to beef around what phil was for me and that's ambitious but that's what i tried to do [Music] you could just see that weight lifted from him i think it turned around i think he could have gone into that dark spiral that often sports people do of of not having the thing they worked so hard in their life now he's working with the sydney kings and he's still got that you're going to roll pretend you find a body here to arch you for a jumper then dave's going to feed australia for a finish i'm just a generalist with this team i'm a consultant just getting loose i didn't want to be around the game for a long time and i finally realised how much i'm used to [Music] you know if you're having difficulties the next thing happens that the big fella walks in the door and says let's have a talk and he can do it because everyone respects who he is and who he was do you feel any pressure being named jordan and playing basketball yeah every day can't get out of bed it's a little bit ironic but basketball has ended up filling some sort of a void for me in later life that i feel like basketball created in earlier life did you hear the bench more yesterday from the court did you think the bench was more engaged yeah basketball sort of brought me back to being whole again a little bit and in my mind i'd like to get back to where i started the story which is as a gentle slightly alternative um giving person when the last dance dropped on netflix last year everyone was talking about the chicago bulls and michael jordan all over again but where the hell was luke longley the uh cleo oh i'm gone i saw you i missed it to watch this documentary with great anticipation and to not see yourself in it that's that's tough and i know it hurt him there you go stop oh sitting there on the couch and watching episode after episode where i wasn't in it was i was like yeah i was bummed about that i didn't expect to be a heavy feature in it because they hadn't interviewed me and stuff but i did expect to be in it more than i was oh there's spotter again look at that twice in one day you want your family to to be able to appreciate it which mine did i watched it with my kids and um but i thought about you know luke's omission from it and how much he lost from that i think the worst part for luke was that the phone was ringing all day all night everyone wanted to know why aren't you in the you know what how are you feeling right now like drama drama drama i didn't say anything in the media because i hadn't finished seeing it i didn't know what to say and i ended up changing my phone number because it was just overwhelming i was overwhelmed with interest it was like revisiting the whole thing again where suddenly i needed an alias i needed to go in through the kitchen again there you go claire there's a siding there it is i think we're up to four now is that right yeah four sightings well i am not in the docker i don't really know to be honest the self-deprecating australian in me thinks it's because i'm not that exciting he had suits to match his ferraris do you remember that i was playing a huge role but it wasn't one that was that sexy to be honest there's so many beautiful bright shiny stars out there to focus on that you know it makes sense to me that that story wasn't about me makes perfect sense there's only so much you know that that they could cover and luke was all the way in australia he was difficult to reach in terms of getting an interview there was a lot of people that you know was a part of what happened in the 90s that uh you know probably got left out but i feel bad that luke wasn't involved skinny look at skinnies i can understand why australia would say well why wouldn't we include luke and we probably should have and and that was i guess if you look back and see if i could change anything that's probably what i could have changed it's a great trip down memory lane that's the great thing you know i've got my criticisms of this taco but generally it's been a great thing i'm talking about again thinking about again people asking questions about again that's a good thing you know i feel proud of him yeah good it's a long time ago someone had to try and write this story up and they excluded people unfortunately that had a big part but the memory is ours we have a story that's connected us 25 years ago and it still connects us now so yeah i'm glad i'm glad that you have taken the opportunity to give a little shout out to luke and what his role was that was all happening at the same time as i was making my decision to fuse my ankle which was a direct result of what was going on in the doco so there was this sort of a loop for me of here i am sitting there with my about to be fused ankle watching why my ankle needs to be fused i'm actually really surprised he took so long to actually have his ankle operation he put up with that for 20 years and there was a lot of pain connected to that ankle [Music] hey so i'm recovering from my ankle fusion i'm not allowed to go home until it's two weeks old which it is tomorrow thanks bro fusion is very permanent and it's a major deal it's what i've done does it feel like a consequence do you feel like you're wearing that's the strong bit is it such a clear yeah emblem of the cost of doing business man oh man it's it's changed our life it's um he's so much happier and freer and he can walk without having any pain he he carried that for so long i feel another chilly jam coming on luke it's gonna be plenty isn't there i live on an old farm down south of perth on the beach there's fish to surf we grow our own vegetables it's peaceful it's it's lovely and i love it down there some of these ones are getting a bit tired well he's had this place for a long time so i think he was 21 when he bought it with a stack of the money that he got from some trading cards life is so different for him down in denmark on his farm he's really secluded down there that community they have never ever asked anything of me and when i walk down the street i get a hello loot but there's never been any fanfare they're all farmers they probably either don't know i don't care i love that about it luke's a quiet guide this land and place suits him more than i can imagine being a rock star basketballer for the rest of his life i think luke for a long time was reluctant to sort of step back into the legend of of what he did and what he was a part of the chicago bulls have won their sixth nba championship and it's their second three-piece he had a great great career and a career that most would you know fantasize about having so i i you know i consider luke real fortunate luke was the starting center on the team that won three straight nba championships you cannot take that away from them i don't really understand why i've sort of avoided it for a long time and didn't really engage with it i think it just coming out of it just hurt i didn't coming out of it hurt i wanted away from it and now i'm digging being around basketball again and so i'm keen to talk about it interestingly mj and i are exchanges now are really friendly and warm and i think that now that we're not playing together there's room for that already you're a busy man michael why did you agree to take time out of your schedule to do this interview for luke he matters to me yeah you know he does matter to me and his story needs to be told sure i mean there's some goodness and bad but that's all a part of life you know you're gonna have friends that you have good and bad things about you know but we went through trenches we we we shared a lot you know we competed together and and you know i would take him any day of the week if you know if i had to go through a competition again if you ask me to do it all over again there's no way i would leave luke longley off my team no way possible because he mattered you know he had an impact on me well go mj he made me better as a player you know as a person wow my way that's something a notion in japanese art and life that nothing should be quite perfect and i like that idea because i wasn't perfect i didn't plan to be the first australian or cook at the mba i didn't plan to be the first australian to win a championship it unfolded in front of me and at the time that was just what i did and it seemed great i've never really carried on about it much and i don't really want to anymore either but um i can't help but be proud of it you know [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 1,812,966

Keywords: abc news, abc news indepth, documentaries, Australian Story, Luc Longley, Luc Longley basketballer, Luc Longley Chicago Bulls, The Last Dance, The Last Dance documentary, Chicago Bulls, Chicago Bulls Documentary, Michael Jordan, Michael Jordan bulls, Scottie Pippin, Boomers Basketball team, Steve Kerr, bulls three peat, Phil Jackson, bulls history, Sydney 2000 basketball, best basketball team of all time, NBA in the 90s, espn bulls documentary, what happened to luc Longley

Id: US7VFL9cXTk

Length: 63min 18sec (3798 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/GiveMeSomeIhedigbo]

Michael Jordan passed to Luc Longley for a game-tying shot with under 20 seconds left in Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Finals. I was stunned when I saw that in the Last Dance.

[u/[deleted]]

Genuinely a fascinating story, and although it’s a shame he didn’t feature at all in The Last Dance, it’s almost good that he didn’t, because his story deserved its own doco

[u/adelaide78]

Long dick Luc