Luc Longley and Michael Jordan reveal why they are good mates now after the pair had a rocky road at the Chicago Bulls and the Aussie was cut out of the basketball legend's Last Dance documentary
The first Australian to get drafted in an American NBA team has revealed he is now on good terms with Michael Jordan despite his disappointing omission from a Netflix documentary that chronicled their team's success.
Luc Longley, the 2.18metre centre from Perth, Western Australia, who played in the all-conquering Chicago Bulls team during the mid-1990s, told the ABC that his exchanges with Jordan were now 'friendly and warm'.
The highly-anticipated docuseries on the career of the man considered basketball's greatest player, Michael Jordan, became a huge Netflix hit last year.
However it wasn't long before family, friends and fans of the crucial member of the Bulls' championship-winning teams in 1996, 1997 and 1998, realised Longley hardly featured in the documentary, The Last Dance.
Luc Longley, the first Australian to get drafted on an American NBA team, has revealed why he remains on good terms with former teammate Michael Jordan after a tense stint at the Chicago Bulls 25 years ago
'Sitting there on the couch and watching episode after episode where I wasn't in it — yeah, I was bummed about that,' Longley said in an Australian Story episode.
'Why was I not in the doco? I don't really know, to be honest,' Longley said.
In the second episode of the ABC program Jordan said he could understand that Australians were confused why Longley hadn't featured in the docuseries.
'We probably should have included . And if I look back and could change anything, that's probably what I would have changed,' he said.
Other than some glimpses of Longley on court and in dressing rooms he was otherwise MIA, while other team members were extensively interviewed.
'I would like to have been in the doco so that Australian kids saw that there was an Australian in that team doing that thing,' Longley said.
Australian Luc Longley won three NBA championships alongside Michael Jordan while playing for the Chicago Bulls between 1996 and 1998
The Last Dance Producers previously explained it was too expensive to send a crew to Longley's home on the south coast of Western Australia to interview him.
Despite this, Longley said he now had a theory why he didn't feature more heavily in the acclaimed production.
'The self-deprecating Australian in me thinks it's because I'm not that exciting,' he said. 'I was playing a huge role but it wasn't one that was that sexy.
'There were 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.'
His wife, celebrity chef Anna Gare, said the worst part for Luc was the constant phone calls from friends asking why he had been excluded from the series.
Longley playing for the Chicago Bulls during game one of the 1998 NBA Finals
'I ended up changing my phone number because it was overwhelming, I was overwhelmed with interest,' he explained.
However after 25 years of a somewhat frosty relationship between Jordan and Longley, the ice has begun to thaw between the pair.
When asked why he decided to partake in the series on the Aussie legend, Jordan replied: 'He matters to me. He does matter to me and his story needs to be told.
'You're going to have friends that you have good and bad things about but we shared a lot.
'If you asked me to do it all over again, there's no way I would leave Luc Longley off my team — no way possible, because he mattered.
'He had an impact on me. He made me better as a player, as a person.'
When asked why he decided to partake in the series on the Aussie legend, Jordan replied: 'He matters to me. He does matter to me and his story needs to be told'. (pictured in 1997)
Longley explained the decades spent off the court had been crucial for repairing his friendship with Jordan and described their exchanges as 'warm and friendly'.
'Wow go MJ. Wowee. That's something,' an emotional Longley said after watching Jordan's touching tribute.
Longley was the first Australian to play at the top level in the National Basketball Association and held a place in a team considered one of the greatest of all time.
He'd graduated from the American college system where he described himself as a 'soft Fremantle kid'.
Despite his talent, as a teenager Longley said he was not that committed to the sport.
'I wasn't serious, I wasn't down in the gym like all the other guys,' Longley said.
'People around at that stage said, 'Oh, he's not going to make it. He doesn't want it badly enough.'
Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Luc Longley and Dennis Rodman of the Chicago Bulls during a game against the Golden State Warriors in 1998
After a 'miserable' three-year stint when he was drafted to the Minnesota Timberwolves, Longley tells the program he felt at home when was traded to the high-profile Bulls in 1994.
But Jordan, who'd returned to the Bulls after an aborted retirement in 1995, targeted the big, red-headed Australian, as he previously told the program.
'I don't think Luc had the mentality of what it took to win,' Jordan said.
'I felt the need to push him. You had to show him a little tough love, you know. That's what I call it – tough love.'
Longley confessed he struggled to deal with Jordan's aggression and take-no-prisoners approach to winning.
'I might not have been a killer like MJ was, but you don't need 12 killers,' Longley said.
The seven-foot-two giant said he was a 'gentle, empathetic kid' who had to 'adopt some MJ' in order to make it in the NBA.
Basketball's greatest player, Michael Jordan played 15 season in the NBA with the Chicago Bulls, winning six championships
Longley, now 52, said he was a 'soft Fremantle kid' when he started in the NBA, and struggled to deal with the win-at-all-costs attitude of a star like Michael Jordan
As seen in The Last Dance, Jordan's legendary will-to-win often rubbed his team-mates the wrong way.
'You never hear anyone in the show talk about what good company Jordan was or how much fun around the Chicago Bulls' locker-room,' Daily Mail Australia's sports expert Mike Colman wrote. 'Just how driven he was and how hard he rode his teammates in his pursuit of success.'
Today Longley, 52, is a special assistant to the Sydney Kings in Australia's NBL and also helps out with Australia's national team, the Boomers.
Away from basketball he lives with his wife, on a property 400 kilometres south of Perth at Denmark. Both have two children from previous marriages.
THE CAREER OF LUC LONGLEY
Teams:
1986 - Perth Wildcats
1991–1994 - Minnesota Timberwolves
1994–1998 - Chicago Bulls
1998–2000 - Phoenix Suns
2000–2001 - New York Knicks
Olympic Games, 1988, 1992, 2000 - Australia Boomers
Career highlights:
NBA champion - Chicago Bulls 1996–1998
2× Australian State League champion - 1989, 1990
Gaze Medal winner - 1989
Australian Basketball Hall of Fame - 2006
Sport Australia Hall of Fame - 2009