my brother jordan - documentary

i don't really have a real answer of why this project exists you know ultimately sure he's you know he's dead but not to me it's just like anybody i meet and if they see anything even an ounce of a decent human being in me i'm like man you should meet my brother jordan so i just wish you could have met him but you can't so i made this documentary it's not good enough but it's all i got [Music] when he died i didn't know much of anything but i knew you know i was like i'm going to tell a story somehow [Music] every time i remember seeing jordan i remember seeing justin i would say if you knew one of them you probably knew both of them there were other people there too but it was always the two of you [Music] it was almost like you guys could understand each other without without talking i think you're as close as any two brothers probably ever live just about justin you do everything i love you so much like justin was the person that led jordan in a lot of ways but jordan also had this just great example of how to be a man and how to do it right and it was a great balance not only for justin but for all of us if i had to describe jordan to somebody that didn't know him i would probably say a gentleman and a light say hi [Music] hey [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey jordan smile that's it he had one of those kind of personalities that like you know he wasn't going to say much when he's in a room but you always got comfort knowing that he was in the room is this merry christmas morning 1996. i wonder what that is a bike you think so yeah is this gonna be like a theme of like every girl you interview about them being in love with george jordan is the kind of guy you know you hope to raise your son that way the kind of guy you hope your daughter marries it sounds like cliche to say all these things but it's like most true when i'm speaking about jordan after he passed away like nobody had to lie about who he was [Music] he was a shooter first of all he'd catch him on shoot and then he really didn't have any moves after that [Music] anybody and i got to know jordan they were blessed to know jordan he really lived life the way it should be lived death is really weird for a lot of people because people say we'll never forget or you know they'll never be forgotten but people forget when you really love someone deeply i don't think you forget and i think if you love somebody you talk about them documentary is just me talking about him i know this documentary is pretty simple i guess i love jordan and jordan love me i think that's pretty good my parents met in 1974 at southwestern baptist theological seminary in fort worth texas it's a place where people usually go to become a missionary or a pastor like my dad or like my mom to find a spouse they were married on june 28 1975. my dad was 33 and my mom was 24. and i think this is my dad trying to serenade my mom on the honeymoon so let's skip ahead [Music] jeffrey matthew robinson was born in fort worth texas on september 28 1980. he led the way for us brothers and took the game of basketball and as a fan of michael jordan but more than anything he loved all things weaponry and he didn't discriminate either as long as bullets or something sharp came out of it he was into it he coordinated most of our violent fun growing up living room football wrestling and boxing matches when our parents weren't home he even created a first person shooter game where you could be davy crockett fighting at the alamo this is davy crockett defending the west wall of the alamo against santa ana's march and he even had someone behind the camera throwing little pop firecrackers on cue with the violence after graduating high school with this serial killer photo he went on to the west coast to study constitutional law he passed the bar in everything but instead went to study theology at the baptist college of florida and during his time there he created somewhat of an underground boxing fight club made up of mostly pastors in 2008 he followed him mom and dad's footsteps by graduating from southwestern seminary with a masters of divinity and apologetics and now he's a pastor you okay i know there's somebody in here who's real tight who's about to leave already but just just just hang with us for the next hour and a half just kidding at that point my dad got another church job in broken arrow oklahoma and nine months after some of this we have second born joshua david robinson born in tulsa oklahoma on january 30th 1984. he followed in jeff's footsteps in his love for michael jordan and for basketball he was a competitive kid the type of kid who couldn't hide how he felt whether it was anger joy or the things only puberty can do he'll probably be mad at me for showing some of these clips my mom called him the social chairman because he always wanted to be involved in the action he ended up playing one season of both basketball and baseball to koa falls college in 2004 but his first love was surfing in december 2006 he graduated from the baptist college of florida with a degree in christian education and he worked as a youth pastor for a while but now he too is a pastor let that sink in for a minute then on august 24 1987 the man of the hour jordan paul robinson was born in tulsa oklahoma instantly making the world a better place after that my dad moved the family to charlotte north carolina for a new church job for the next three years it was jeff josh and jordan and they enjoyed what they could while they had the chance because it wasn't long until i came into the picture and there i am the run of the litter born in pineville north carolina on august 30th 1990 to a 39 year old mom and a 47 year old dad outside of apple juice jordan was never really defensive of much of anything but he was of me this is your brother he kept telling jeff and josh that i was his baby from that moment on outside of the bathroom we were never really apart we were a match made in heaven polar opposites in a lot of ways but that evened us out into quite the little duo he had grace and i didn't oh he was the good cop and i was definitely not the good cop any other dude in this place probably would have killed me or vice versa probably vice versa i think just the fact that jordan went 20 years without putting me in the hospital is worth a documentary as i filled out the last spot on our family roster one thing was true i was the black sheep of the bunch i raised a lot of hell for a pastor's kid [Applause] through vhs tapes of the mj bulls dynasty i fell in love with the game of basketball my life plan was to go play college basketball for the north carolina tar heels and then go be a navy seal but let's pause and rewind back to the magical pivotal moment in my origin story when i realized what a camera did are we going to watch jumping yes well there's gonna be a movie of us my life was forever changed i started making videos in middle school with our vhs camera and became jordan's communist director after that i started making short films in college and got my foot in the door of the film industry as a camera assistant with dreams of being a writer director [Music] but there came a point in my filmmaking where i couldn't make anything else until i made this documentary so here we are a documentary about a brother by a brother now at this point of the story my dad took a new church job in luling [Music] let's louisiana together this morning i mean we had a good old southern baptist small town look after know everything church [Music] no you can count the big numbers can't you yeah um we were very homeschooled if you already couldn't tell by her haircuts you can always spot a homeschool kid when their sideburns are cut all the way above the ear i think my mom wanted to save money and shield off the world with our spiritual warfare helmets my dad used to always say your hair should draw to your countenance [Music] outside of haircuts there were a few other things that were out of our control we weren't allowed to go to the movie theater and the films we were allowed to watch at home had to be g-rated to my mom pg was practically rated r so we saw the films gordy and babe way too many times this clip shows what it looks like for a homeschooler to interact with the outside world i'm kidding mom [Laughter] this clip here is what it looks like for jordan to interact with the world jordan was a peaceful cat he was like winnie the pooh with a bowl of honey he did stare at things a lot sometimes at girls [Music] and sometimes at imaginary vanilla wafers in the midst of peril without any good movies to watch our entertainment had to be pretty creative jordan always thought it was hilarious when jeff would put me on his shoulders and stuff my big head full of crackers the only outside world we knew was when we visited my grandmother my mom's mom in pensacola florida or when we go to gatlinburg tennessee on vacation where this kid learned to never stop in front of me in this clip jordan was annoyed with me because a few minutes prior i wouldn't let him pass me in the daytona 500. [Music] my mom always liked to end the trip with one of those western family portraits today in the town of david the savior has been born since we were pastors kids we were automatically involved for every god-awful church musical growing up and this tune couldn't have sung it clearer [Music] there's only a few unscaring clips in this musical madness such as this one where jordan wins over the audience with his cuteness or this one where his eyes couldn't quite compute how pretty this girl was or this one where he almost sang too early but played it off with a cough [Music] [Applause] jordan was like my first like best friend growing up we both liked the bulls you know he had his his love for michael jordan and i like tony coach hey sean how old are you you're at that age where you're starting to realize certain things you know i remember the olympics me and him had a crush on dominique muciano we were so scared for anybody to hear it you know he didn't want anybody to know because you were embarrassed i picked this all out myself jordan he did you like it yeah since jordan's birthday was on august 24th and mine was on the 30th even though we were three years apart we always celebrated our birthdays together we liked to party at discovery zone or fun works which was pretty much heaven for us but sometimes we had to party on a budget and that's where my mom would come up with cheap games to keep us boys grateful and occupied i remember one game of like passing something around your mom was like playing the recorder for whoever stopped who had got the present and i tried to like hold on to it long and jordan just like ripped it out of my hands and just like punched me and just like no we don't do that i was like dude whatever my mom even did this for jeff and josh way back in the 80s when my dad would dress up like a character straight out of a wes anderson movie [Applause] [Music] i don't really know how it started but jordan went through this mini stuntman phase from ages 8 to 11 where he really just didn't care about pain although most of jordan's faults weren't on purpose dating all the way back to his diaper days onward of all the falls he took this is the only clip of him crying but he got tackled playing duck duck goose so that's fair nobody wants to be on the pot i'm ready outside of a high tolerance for payne a couple other aspects of jordan was that he'd stutter if he got too stoked about something [Music] and he'd stick out his tongue when he played video games and that actually went on his entire life and it was always a huge source of joy for me and my camera hi what's inside here our neighborhood was pretty much like the movie the sandlot all the kids came together to play there was always a sport to play it was always about hoops we played a lot of street hockey we played baseball we were always outside running around we even had a community pool and that gave birth to many dreams about our future wendy peppercorn here's proof of my first ever romantic relationship sadly i didn't even get her name one thing i really loved about visiting the robinson's house miss jennifer was always baking some bread she had his bread machine house always smelled good and me being a big kid i like to eat [Music] basketball was always intense in the driveway i wasn't really that good at basketball so i would just hang with miss j and eat the bread she made they were all male just all-american party boys trying to out wrestle out punch out shoot out play outrun each other i don't know how we got it past mom because she was not a fan of violence at all but we were able to to get a set of boxing gloves from a garage sale you know justin when he was young we would teach him how to punch us in the face like he was just a little toddler kid okay right here get your fist like this and hit me in the face and we would like guide his hand and you know get him to work his core so he could throw a good hook for those of you that know justin justin wanted blood he wanted to just take my head off because i was the brother that kind of gave him a hard time come on justin was throwing one two threes and timings just to run [Applause] jordan it never really clicked i think jordan when he put on boxing gloves we called him clubber and he would open his mouth i don't think he's ever thrown a straight punch in his life this is our street that's it that's our [Music] house [Applause] i'm really grateful for basketball and the culture that comes with it it was my gateway into the unsheltered world it taught me a lot about myself about humanity about life around 1998 or so my dad took a new job in the middle of nowhere bonham texas [Music] we lived in bonham for about a year and after y2k didn't happen we were on to a new church this time in palm bay florida our new neighbors across the street had two kids daniel and jeff i became friends with daniel through common ground and our love for tar heel basketball we only hit heads once and that was on accident sorry dude jordan became friends with jeff who was a skateboarder so jordan ended up trading a basketball for a skateboard up to that point he liked basketball but he didn't love it and he was never super vocal about what he liked or much of anything really so he really had to listen to his actions and though i took some trash talk i could get jordan away from his board long enough to get a game of one-on-one alan iverson [Music] justin loved the game and jordan knew justin loved the game because you wanted to play college basketball you wanted to play at north carolina and he was going to do what he needed to do to help you fulfill that dream as a freshman jordan picked up the basketball again that team didn't have a whole lot of depth so much so they had me a sixth grader dressed out on varsity you handled it a lot better than i thought you would you handled your own man like you did good it was a lot harder for jordan to hold his own out there without his skateboard he was a fish out of water i mean he came from a basketball family and he didn't play basketball and he was skateboarding man when we found him and basketball was an afterthought and when he started it was a disaster don't go away he wasn't clumsy i don't know what size shoe we had or how big his hands were but he was just that kind of guy he was graceful but yet he was clumsy at the same time if that makes any sense but then he decided for whatever reason that he wanted to play he was like i want to be able to do this and he didn't necessarily have the skills and know how to but he knew he needed to be able to do this and i saw something in him that i didn't see a lot of the other kids a lot of the kids get in there start playing pig or whatever like that no man he'd be out there getting another 20 50 100 shots you know curling off off a high screen getting the feet right and squaring up and he was just so faithful about doing these little things and coming to practice all the time and getting better and it showed i mean from his quick release to such a smooth shot you can tell this kid hey he didn't just go shoot five times this week he's probably got a thousand shots in already this week like that's hours of work they're far few between that come with that kind of work ethic that was put in by god at a very young age and then used in all areas of his life and basketball just received his innate qualities of faithfulness of hard work of commitment there are certain kids that you coach and you're you're sort of hoping you know that they bring it this day or that day or important game or that with jordan i never had to think about that you almost have like an advantage being brothers because you grew up playing all the time together they were like the dynamic duo it was like one didn't come without the other justin would be out there talking trash destroying kids self-esteem and you took basketball to more than just a physical sport and a talent because there's a mental side of it too and you know how to mess with people's mental side justin he was mouthy all the time smack everybody knew he was when he walked into the gym and nobody even sometimes knew who jordan was i mean he would just kind of walk in and take care of business and then walk back out they were like not the same but on the same wavelength symphony of a relationship and i think justin really played that key role as they played together and being that one that constantly spoke to him and constantly pushed him and it was really just an awesome thing to watch they're distinct different styles of play with justin being just so creative and making things happen and jordan's just you know one throwing the dagger out there every time he was very very unique in so much that his life was outside the game was exactly the same as it was on the court [Music] oh since me and jordan weren't allowed to date or go to the movies we started to make good use of our offseason by making videos with my mom's vhs camera we began making videos titled the fruits we go to walmart the day after halloween to buy discounted wigs and costumes with money we made cutting grass in the summer ah the sun is blocked by two evil men the two of you together you and jordan together that was a mess it was a fun mess justin and jordan brought costumes everywhere they went you know going to a basketball tournament having players bring a suitcase full of props jordan just did not care what anybody thought i mean he just didn't care usually was a lot of fun to see especially in in their coaches camera smile coach say hello i probably needed that as a coach i mean i was probably way too serious let's see what happens [Applause] [Music] the two of them together just made mayhem that everybody wanted to be a part of and once we got coach away from all the professional adults he joined us and the fruits this is what happens when you remember all the skills that i've taught you this is what you can become me jordan and coach always had the awkward homeschool baller down to a science justin was like the uh the producer nazi go here sit here redo that he's the smallest one out there he's telling us what to do the crazy thing is we did it you idiot and it's funny when i think about jordan he's very opposite in a lot of ways jordan also had this side where like if justin would lead him to do something he would do it so justin created all the crazy things to do and then jordan is the one most likely doing it and now the revenge of jordan like i said earlier about jordan not being super vocal about what he wanted to do now he wanted to play college basketball and since nobody was knocking on his door with a scholarship he found a mom approved christian university in south carolina we called and they said they were having a tryout they already had most of the team but they were doing walk-on tryouts [Music] we knew in that fall that he was going to make a difference we didn't know if it was going to be as the all-time career score in in north greenville history or if it was just going to be through his work ethic through his attitude and honestly either was going to be fine with us and that's what made us realize that we needed jordan robinson i don't know what his expectations were when he started playing at north greenville but we knew with the team that we had that he wasn't going to play a ton his freshman year and yet he comes in and he is in better shape than every single person that we have is working harder than every single person that we have and it was it was fun to watch like he was that kid you hated to play against but you love to have him on your team because you didn't have to play against him it's not like we took it easy on him he got beat up every day tough as nails never complained not once and that was one of the things i admired about him because you know he would show up every day and work work his tail off and knowing he wasn't gonna play jordan was that guy that dove after every loose ball you know even if it's practice you know where a lot of guys might pull up jordan would say i'll jump out of bounds to get this that in itself you know makes a team better you're kind of always like looking over your shoulder like where's jordan that went a long way because if if your top three guys love the heck out of your 15th guy then your locker room is going to be in a good place i mean just understanding that because he was i mean how can you not be committed to him when you watch how committed he is to you me and my parents would go visit jordan often and on one of those visits my dad interviewed for a new church job in the greenville area it was a sad night i really had a great time coaching you it was one of the things that's underrated and coaching there's a lot of kids i've coached they're not fun to coach they're good players good kids i really had a good time coaching you so it was that was a disappointing night he held it together that whole time and when you left he was in tears in the kitchen the day they drove up to south carolina for their move justin played in his first game with us that night [Music] [Applause] [Music] and since me and jordan were under the same roof again i had to remind them what kind of brother i was i wasn't trying to do that dude what the heck dude i missed it twice how is that possible after our first season in south carolina ended florida was on our mind but for jordan it was a girl rachel now she was still in school back at covenant but they had developed a relationship before he left and throughout his freshman year so rachel invited jordan to the junior senior and like a good third wheel i was gonna come too the day before or was the day of we went to a matinee showing up the movie disturbia it was one of those movies where it was a perfect opportunity to hold her hand because it was a little suspenseful and i remember noticing or kind of feeling the tension of her wanting him to hold her hand at jordan wanting to hold her hand button neither of them doing anything about it i mean it was so funny because i saw i knew what like he wanted to do he wanted to hold my hand it was like the third act and i remember just telling jordan hold her hand and just a small window into jordan's backstory he had never kissed a girl but that meant the little things that jordan did meant like the world after the event was over rachel later shared the story of jordan's boldness and that's without any screen direction from me it was raining outside he's looking at me and he's like okay you have two options he's like i can either go get the car for you or i can pick you up and carry you to the car and at first i was like no it's okay but he's like no come on and so he picked me up and carried me out to the car and i was laughing the whole entire time he actually ended up taking me to the wrong car and um so we were both just laughing and so he just set me down and we walked the rest of the way to the car because he was pretty tired i think after a few days home we went back to greenville scene three actor one commence [Music] jordan spent the rest of that summer getting better and getting a lot stronger he always had a very high tolerance for pain and trust me i would know his 5 out of 10 pain level would be a 15 out of 10 for the average joe and even when he was in pain he would rarely ever complain about it when jordan was in high school he had a knot on his shin and we asked our family doctor and then a doctor friend what they thought they said well it's probably just an injury made from the basketball or pull muscle or something like that you could check it out but it's probably just something like that so we didn't think much about it you can sort of see the lump on his leg here i remember watching him at one practice earlier in the year and i could tell he was in pain we'd fall down and grab him and get right back up other than that i mean like i said he didn't complain ever i mean i was hurt all the time i was in any other training room he was never in there and i could tell his pain was different but like most athletes he just kept playing through it although he'd sometimes keep it wrapped in case it got bumped it would often flare up and get kind of red or feverish looking after jordan's first year of college playing basketball and getting hit and falling and everything he said this thing hurts i'm ready to get it off a local sports related doctor told us that it was probably a herniated disc or just some fluid built up so he said we'll do a simple surgery to drain it i remember that doctor praying in front of my parents which was like telling him he's on the same team as he assured them that this is just a run-of-the-mill problem what they discovered in his leg was the farthest thing from run of the mill when i took jordan for his first follow-up after the surgery to make sure his stitches were all healing up and everything from that the doctor walks in he says we're going to recommend that you go see an oncologist and i said to myself an oncologist that's a cancer doctor i just remember that day it was so weird because you never think about it until it happens to somebody that's close to you or that you care about what do you do what do you think what do you say it didn't it didn't seem real you know because you know jordan being who he was nicest person i knew it felt so surreal that it would happen to jordan of all people he was really one of those people like why jordan he's such an amazing man like why jordan so there you have it the most merciful and kind-hearted dude i know as cancer the epithelioid type make up less than one percent of the sarcoma so it is a very rare tumor since this type of cancer was so incredibly rare they reached out to harvard for a second opinion who replied i'm sorry to say that i can do no better than to label this as an unclassified epithelioid malignant neoplasm basically what had happened was that drain surgery not only discovered those suspicious cells it drained those cells into his ankle he was then scheduled for surgery on august 7th and that was referred to as a considerable debulking procedure and or radical resection after that surgery his ankle was still positive for persistent sarcoma the doctor then recommended further resection but also explained to my parents that jordan might ultimately require a below knee amputation in order to control the tumor they understood this and wished to proceed with further resection and even after both surgeries they couldn't remove the entirety of the sarcoma the trauma from those procedures on jordan's leg was catastrophic per the doctor's notes this dissection did leave peroneal tendons as well as distal fibula also the very lateral edge of the achilles tendon was exposed the wound was found to be 25 centimeters by 13 centimeters in size they had to take a skin graft from his thigh to try and cover his now open leg and they followed that up with a wound vac and for those who don't know what a wound vac is here's wikipedia's definition the therapy involves the controlled application of sub-atmospheric pressure to the local wound environment using a sealed wound dressing connected to a vacuum pump it promotes wound healing by applying a vacuum through a special sealed dressing the continued vacuum draws out fluid from the wound and increases blood flow to the area a nurse would often have to come by the house to check on the wound vac and clean and rebandage his leg which would cause a quiet and patient kid like jordan to at times scream jordan would go into the bathroom in the evenings and he just would be in there cleaning it i mean just like if somebody came and just gutted your lower leg and other than the pain bother him he just did it you tell jordan to go run a mile in five and a half minutes and he's like well i'm gonna work at that until i can do that you know you tell him to go you know stay in the gym until he makes a thousand threes he's going to stay in the gym until he does it you give him cancer and tell him that he's got to try to beat it and i think that's i don't think he knew how to think any other way jordan was so positive with it you know the idea of of him you know losing the battle to that just didn't really even enter my mind because i didn't feel like it had even really entered his through it all he started his fall classes for a sophomore year on crutches and in a wheelchair and he obviously wasn't going to be playing basketball that season but he was still a part of the team even when he was in a wheelchair he never wanted the attention never and even then he wouldn't complain this is one of the last pictures of him before his luscious lock started to fall out from the chemo and in honor of his last haircut for a while we went for the rebellious homeschooler look in february 2008 jordan finished his 36th and final treatment of radiation before continuing on with more chemo march was filled with basketball we got to go to the acc championship between north carolina and clemson and then he came to the final tournament of my junior season in virginia and no matter how i played or how upset my dad got jordan kept us all laughing how can you be in so much pain and still have so much fun people that i see that are in pain they complain the whole time it's always about about them you know it was never about jordan everyone came before him and i mean that's just how he lived his life even throughout the unrelenting cancerous process this dude still made a cameo in our videos oh cool hi uh i don't know where your hands been the cancer was tough on him but the fact that he was like still out there like filming with us and there to support justin obviously you know people share things whether it's a food or a drink or time together they would share laughter one night when it was like three in the morning and he was up not able to sleep and jordan's not the most blunt person in the world that's more right my realm but he just looked at me and goes you know what dude like what man cancer is a [ __ ] and that's dude yeah it is yeah it is and more tell me about it that was probably the hardest we laughed through the whole entire time he had cancer was when he said cancer is a [ __ ] it's also it was the first time i heard him cuss so i was like ooh gord wow during this time josh had been living in jacksonville florida he'd gotten engaged to cassidy on valentine's day 08 and they were set to marry in june i remember at the wedding just it was kind of an emotional time i know how much it meant for josh and cassidy for him to be there just as much as it meant to him and it was hard i mean for him even to be at rehearsal jordan marched through the groomsmen process like he did everything else like a champ you know i got to see his leg for the first time and man that was overwhelming and then i got to see jordan emotional for the first time it kind of broke down just a little bit and i got to see some of the hurt and some confusion that was going on kind of let me into that world just a little bit and man i was crushed for me it was a time of excitement and then brokenness i can't do this i think that was probably the first time it became real for me that jordan was really sick and by then he was really sick after that he started declining really fast the cancer wasn't just taking over his entire leg but his entire body going from this guy with muscles and abs and to being so thin and face sunk in i mean it was almost like you saw a shell of him and uh up to that point he had 36 treatments of radiation seven treatments of chemo and five surgeries and even still he was being eaten alive the doctor came to our house and told us and jordan that there was nothing else he could do months he said i stood there in the doorway of jordan's room and listened to him cry my parents then took jordan to duke to see if they had any new experimental options but sadly they said there was nothing else that could be done jimmy's driving i'm in the front seat then jordan's in the backseat of the car six foot two size 13 shoe he is crying his little heart out back there and he says mom mom please help me and i i couldn't bring myself though to him to even talk to jordan about him dying i should have but i couldn't i always held out that maybe god at the last minute was gonna so i didn't want to plant in jordan's mind and heart that he couldn't be healed so i just couldn't bring it up the pain was so bad we had to really up the morphine which the morphine affects your mind and jordan was never a person who was afraid of much of anything took pain very well but then it started to to cause him to have a lot of fear jimmy said i really wanted to go to the hospital and jordan didn't really want to go to the hospital just that thought of going back to the hospital terrified him just you know scream please please don't take me back there don't take me back there i couldn't really watch we just grabbed a sheet that he was on you know the progression be from oh my leg hurts see him on crutches and into that wheelchair and then to that hospital bed i mean it never seemed real until the day we put them in the ground [Music] it happened on a tuesday and a friend from our church came to the room and they asked me if i wanted to come eat downstairs and to this day i've never eaten in a hospital they asked me can we get you anything and i was like yeah there's this smoothie place that opened downstairs and they came back with this purple smoothie i don't remember what flavor like jordan wasn't eating and stuff and i went over to his bed and i know he was trying to find me with his eyes and i said what's up dude i told him i got some smoothie for you i put the straw in his mouth and and he drank like half of my smoothie i was like dude keep drinking keep drinking man i walked over to the left at the end of the bed and sitting in one of those stinky crappy hospital chairs my dad was like reading the newspaper and my mom was just reading something and i'm here and his bed's like right here and his head's over there and i'm just watching him he just kind of breathed and he raised his chest real high and it just he made a noise that was like it's like a code red or something and breathed again and it was harder for him and on the second breath i said mom and then jordan breathed one more time he inhaled and then he didn't exhale my mom ran out of the hospital room calling for a nurse and one by one they come in and check his pulse and the doctor came in and jordan's eyes were open and he just awkwardly but politely walked over and tried to do the old like close the eyelids thing and they didn't close he did it again and they didn't close and then he looked over at me and with my eyes i just you know just leave him alone and he didn't touch him again then everybody left and so i just stood with him at his bed it wasn't my brother anymore [Music] to have a son die it's the most grief i've ever had in my life tears your heart out you rather you die than him it's awful [Music] there's a part of me that was know worried wasn't the thing because it's not like it matters how many people are there but i was like like is it just going to be like the team and the family and you know the north greenville community like what's like who's going to be here and i walk in and i'm like in the back row trying to figure out where i'm going to sit because there's so many folks who are there to kind of celebrate what he meant to them [Music] i just remember being you know it was again kind of an aha moment i was like well obviously it makes perfect sense that a kid who you know loves people like crazy is going to be loved back like crazy i don't have any footage from jordan's funeral but i do have this audio of coach's eulogy as was said earlier there's a lot to jordan jordan's life other than him being sick he played for us at covenant christian down in palm bay florida down there there are four things that are pretty important to us and they were pretty important to jordan and that's playing for christ playing hard playing smart and playing together if you knew jordan he embodied the big four and that's what we call that and jordan's final game that he played in high school we played at pine castle christian in orlando florida we lost that game even jordan particularly played his guts out that game the most important thing that jordan taught me was that the big four it doesn't mean anything if you just apply it to the game what he taught me that night in that moment in a moment of loss that the world saw as bad that the newspaper would print the next day that was bad that it was good and that we had played hard we had played smart we had played together and at the end we were there in the middle of that court and we were there just crying and hugging each other and giving all the glory to god and that is what it was about it's what it always was about for him he lived hard he lived smart he lived together with his family and his teammates and i think i speak for the two gentlemen behind me and a lot of his teammates that are out there to know him is one of the greatest honors of my life and i loved him very much thank you it was bittersweet you know it was he was in so much pain and [Music] selfishly i just couldn't miss it and uh but the other part of me was just you know happy for him no more pain perfectly healed spending time with jesus i mean that's just what i held to i miss jordan but i thank god you know for what he did and the life he had here and not one thing was wasted and what he did as jordan died i think your connection with coach definitely deepened after the funeral coach took me and a couple friends to a cabin in the mountains of north carolina to get away from it all we went to blockbuster and rented the film no country for old men that's all i really remember and he went back to palm bay and i started my very blurry senior season of basketball my husband who was the coach at the time had asked justin if there was anything we could do for him and justin said i want to wear number 20 which had been jordan's number it meant more to him than just a number like it represented jordan there was a greater drive within you to to respect that you said you were playing for jordan that year i was in a weird type of autopilot i knew what to do and how to do it but i wasn't there it's like when you drive somewhere but you don't remember taking any turns or any cars you just got there without being present i do remember getting a lot of technicals though you can't help but think about justin and him due to how close they were and hey what's this going to do to justin is he just going to be angry forever because maybe he's got the right to be because that's a hardship that not many people have to experience and the ones that do it it breaks them down it was a really hard time to see the change that happened in justin no longer the outgoing justin that i had known for so long kind of became a shell not a lot of interaction happened for a while after that were so close to jordan y'all were inseparable [Music] it's something that doesn't go away that's just a reflection of the significance in the impact i can't imagine like losing that like almost your other half your soul was ripped apart so when you took away jordan it was a blow to you i remember many times seeing tears in his eyes as he would play you were shooting foul shots you couldn't even see the goal because he was crying and it's just you know as a coach some days you just don't say nothing just come here or just let me hold you he'd yell in my shirt and then he'd be done he'd go over and sit down and he'd be fine and go back at it i mean it was hard it was hard for him it just seemed like okay he's done with basketball there's too many close memories to jordan with that that was our life growing up due to awful circumstances was kind of ripped from him that year was just you know it was up and down i think it was a building here for all of us to have to go through that to get to share in that impact of what jordan meant to [Music] justin [Music] when that season ended i didn't play or watch hardly any basketball for about six years jordan offered a lot of solidness to your life and a lot of foundation you know you're this raging awesome mountain that's just going everywhere and jordan was that foundation for you in a lot of areas in a lot of ways and when you rob anything of their foundation things either have it can can crumble or they can set [Music] without jordan in the world i couldn't enjoy the game anymore it wasn't the same and nothing will ever be the same but through making this documentary i came back to the game of basketball [Music] it wasn't until i started watching stephen curry who sparked me back to the game i always thought the game left me but that wasn't the case i'm the one who left my love was always there it was just broken today i keep a ball and a pair of jays in my car at all times to me sometimes basketball is one of the only things that makes any sense and when i'm on a court it's one of the few places i feel at home and though i rarely get to play basketball has much more to me now than it ever was before it's therapy for me while editing all my memories on the court and talking about jordan to all our friends during this process i was reminded of the joy it brought us all those years [Music] i love that i love seeing how how much you care about basketball again that for me was a key point in like okay maybe he's doing all right now maybe he's doing okay he's back to loving what us as kids and jordan loved almost more than anything jordan as an older brother really took care of justin like a way that i think every younger brother wished that their brother had he took the you know the responsibility of being an older brother you know to heart and uh really set the example for justin you know it was a special thing to see how much you guys loved each other [Music] people say you can tell a lot about someone by the way they play the game of basketball jordan he played it like he lived his life he always gave 100 and he made everybody around him better [Music] jordan was the best teammate i ever had justin would not be justin robinson if it wasn't for jordan and jordan's character and jordan's kindness and jordan's consistency and jordan's love all of those things about jordan made justin robinson who he is and i love that we get to reflect on jordan and just what an awesome guy he was and documentaries like this are going to get to go so far and continue in his legacy and who he is and that he gets to live on through those memories i couldn't ask for a greater more loving son than jordan robinson jordan we love you you're a very patient person to live in our family and to be caught right in the middle there okay we love you george you know life hasn't stopped since jordan's death in 2013 josh and cassidy had their first child micah jordan which made me an uncle for the first time his life hit me pretty hard because the fact that he doesn't get to meet uncle jordan i have to be somewhat of two uncles to him i have to love him that much more one way i'd do that is to give him mj gear which was always kind of a love language for me and jordan in 2015 michael became a big brother to hannah who was one of the most stoked little chicks out there whether she's angry or joyful she's all in jeff got married in 2014 and he now has a son named noah jordan and you already know i got him rocking some air jordan onesies the reality is when my daughters ask why i named my daughter my second born jordan hope you know i can tell them the story about jordan paul robinson a guy we call gourd and how he was special to daddy like i'll talk to my wife laura and say hey you know you should be thankful for maybe how i treat you due to the fact of jordan like i want you to know that and i look even farther now having my own little girl and like that's going to be the same message that i communicated to her like hey you're treated a certain way i'm going to raise you a certain way do the stuff i've learned from someone i respected even though me and coach were states apart we always kept in contact i got to hang with him back in may 2016 and we took this picture in his living room in front of jordan's jersey little did i know would be the last time i'd ever see him on monday morning january 30th 2017 i woke up to the news that he had had a heart attack in his sleep two days later i found myself in palm bay florida writing a speech for his funeral i mean we were just texting a few days prior about steph curry he was 45 years old and he leaves behind four amazing daughters and an incredibly cool wife haley she requested that we wear his favorite color to the funeral carolina blue i'm gonna try my best to speak of what i feel coach was to me it's almost like any words that i could write down just don't really speak the language of how i feel about coach you two just you just have a connection i'm not really sure i could define that certain people have that that soul-to-soul connection he loves you at first like a father loves sons and then over time it deepened into a true and enduring friendship coach was kind of like a beacon for a lot of people there's a lot more ships than there are beacons and coach was beacon now as i've gotten older somewhere inside me i keep a list of people that are just on the special list you just make the team of earning my deepest love or you know you come in and save the day for me and specifically with how my my coach loved my brother jordan before and through cancer he's on the list top of the list and at my brother's funeral coach spoke and he ended it simply with to know jordan is one of the greatest honors of my life and i echo those same words about coach you done you know i know that we will never understand fully what's supposed to take place and why things happen but you know it's like i mean i know i'm the interviewee but you're the brother like how is that i have a lot of dreams about him and he's always with me or where i'm going like he's going to meet me there but i never see his face [Music] there was a friend of mine who asked me and he had been going through something that was painful and was like you know how do you deal with the loss of your brother i think he was hoping for some process and i was like well you just bleed out for the rest of your life there's nothing you can do about it but that's not like a oh my gosh i'm trying to depress you that's just a reality when you love somebody that much like it's gonna be painful and everything i touch is gonna have blood on it almost 18 years of my life i had jordan in mind that's an incredible gift so anything i bleed is totally worth it you know most people when they say you should move on means forgetting i don't want to forget every memory i have of him is good even the really terrible ones of watching him die he was still jordan so the whole like time heals all wounds i just don't think that's true for me you know people can say whatever they want like if you're locked arms with someone and i'm hopping on one leg if if he moves i'm going to fall down so now that that person's not there i'm just trying to figure out how to walk i'm going to fall down i'm going to get back up i'm going to fall down i'm going to look for him to hold me up he's not there and then i'm going to remember all the times he held me up [Music] then however far i go that's all i'm going to think about because we're much better together than i am hopping on one foot trying to do [Music] life [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music] you're the only [Music] the world needed you loved me [Music] for me for me you're gone [Music] and [Music] is [Music] um [Music] no [Music] i [Music] i'm not i'm not alright [Music] i'm [Music]

Channel: Justin Robinson

Views: 5,614,183

Rating: 4.9810572 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: ryEq5Yov2G0

Length: 63min 50sec (3830 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Steve3sc]

Don’t know who that guy is, but the doc is FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. Never seen anything so deeply meaningful and passionate about the loss of a loved one. I could FEEL the hurt caused by this mans death, in his brothers and friends voices and eyes. Truly touching.

And well made doc to boot.

10/10. (Jesus, I hope somebody makes something like this for me!)

[u/neuroticbrunette]

This was really beautiful, and very heartbreaking. I didn’t plan on watching the whole thing but I did. It made me cry a lot. If you know Justin personally please tell him that this documentary is very earnest, and whether or not it has a message or a “wide appeal”, it was a beautiful snapshot into their memories as a family and their love and loss.

[u/andrutay]

I watched this last night at like 3am and can recommend it 100000%. It’s a beautiful story, filled with laughter, tears, and everything in between. Watching this not only made me feel like a part of this family, but it also made me think about just how much my own loved ones mean to me.

Also, as expected, the filmmaking is on point.

[u/Ryanm272]

I, unfortunately, didn't know Jordan too well. My Dad and Sister were closer to him than I was. I know Justin, and after watching his documentary last night, I felt like it needed to be shared. The story, editing, and the making of this documentary is so beautiful, I'm happy to see people are enjoying it.

[u/elciclon87]

What did he die of? Or would that spoil the movie? Have an older brother that passed and would love to watch but might be too much for me to handle.

[u/harvey09]

What a wonderful honor to his memory. And the importance of relationships. Very well done.

[u/IHaveADogNamedBear]

That was so beautiful!

[u/Pip_est89]

I just found this in my YouTube recommendations! It’s incredible and needs more attention! So well made!

[u/avenger76]

Keep the tissues close. An emotional documentary about brotherly love, loss and coping. After watching, I believe Jordan positively influenced those around him and helped make the world a better place.