Phonte called to tell me this is the thing I had to read today. As a black North Carolinian. And he was right. Better than every second of that ESPN documentary and what I meant when I said MJ is bama. It is a time, a place, a cultural geography. https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29180890/michael-jordan-history-flight

I mean, look at this.

You either know about eating clay and creasy greens or you don't and almost no one knows that kind of black person anymore. MJ being who he is AND being from that? Is something fantastical.

And I love many of you, gently and so I say it with all due affection: there aren't a lot of people in media anymore who know this kind of culture. So it gets lost in translation.

Felt this in my spirit

My god, I'm going home.

Like I don't even think but a handful people understood bama in this context https://twitter.com/tressiemcphd/status/1252052045940563968

So I take back my earlier assessment that there isn't much left to say about MJ beyond a real exploration of his daddy issues. Apparently there was something left to say about MJ, it just wasn't about MJ.

Shout out to @KieseLaymon in this piece doing this good work. He knows what bama is.