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This all happens before the opening credits have even rolled on episode one of The Last Dance, the compelling new documentary on Jordan and the Bulls 1997-98 season.

His global renown is backed up quickly in the first of the 10-part series as we see Jordan and the Bulls in Paris for their NBA pre-season game.

The French newspaper L’Equipe declares him bigger than the Pope, the television crew want his autograph, and the fans pack out the stadium to see him. There’s not really anyone else to see – Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman were not in France – so Jordan put on a show, just as he always did.

He is certainly the star of this show. Former president Barack Obama is introduced on screen as a “former Chicago resident”.

“At that point Michael Jordan is already the ultimate sports alpha male,” Michael Wilbon, a 30-year veteran of the Washington Post and Chicago-native, says in his interview of 1997, when Jordan had five rings.

“The only comparisons I can recall being apt were to Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali. That’s it, that’s the list. There’s nobody else on it.”

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Jordan’s Hall of Fame acceptance speech in 2009 “proved that he is – forever and ever – the most competitive person alive,” according to ESPN. We’re shown evidence again and again.

His former University of North Carolina assistant coach Roy Willams says Jordan told him that “I’ll show you. Nobody will ever work as hard as I will” when challenged. His teammates back this up. Williams also describes Jordan as “the only player who could turn it on and off – and he never turned it off.”

Jordan fights the Bulls front office on playing when he returns from a foot injury in his second season at the Bulls. He’d been playing secretly at UNC playing and negotiates a deal to play seven minutes per half – and not a second more.

The Bulls sneak into the play-offs and then Jordan is unleashed, dropping 49 and then 63 on the Boston Celtics – the latter coming the day after Celtics forward Danny Ainge had talked trash to him (and beaten him) on the golf course. It was that performance that had Larry Bird say, “That was god disguised as Michael Jordan.”

It’s another quote that encapsulates Jordan best. “Michael played every game as if it was his last, Ahmad Rashad of NBC Sports, says. “Every single game. It was never a day off. He knew that there was someone in that crowd that never saw him play before.”

Jordan was quoted by series director Jason Hehir as being worried he will come across as a “horrible guy”. He has little to fear but he will come across as horribly competitive.

Even Jordan’s humour is competitive. Jordan dismisses talk of rebuilding the Bulls in an interview from the time with the swipe that “The Cubs have been rebuilding for 42 years.”

He also makes GM Jerry Krause the butt of many jokes. “So those are the pills you take to keep you short,” Jordan jokes to him, “Or are those diet pills?”

Krause is firmly cast as the villain of the piece and the internet has already responded to that. He was the one behind the desire to rebuild, he who told coach Phil Jackson he was out at the end of the year “even if he won all 82 games” and reportedly desperate for credit for his role in the Bulls’ first five championships.

“I was getting irritated,” Jordan says, “we were winning.” That is another comment as he looked back on the supposed need for rebuilding a team that had won five championships, including the last two.

It does not help Krause’s case that he was misquoted, as he claimed, to have said “organisations win titles not players” – he claimed in an interview that the word “alone” was left off the end.

“For him to say that is offensive to the way I approach the game,” is Jordan’s take. His approach is one that has been well documented, with Jordan reportedly schooling NBA players one-on-one as an owner.

Michael Jordan says he might seem a ‘horrible guy’ in Bulls documentary

It comes across that Jordan did not need really Krause as the bad guy, even if the rest of the team unified behind it. He could find a perceived slight in an empty room and draw motivation from that.

“My innate personality is to win at all costs,” Jordan says, “It drives me insane when I can’t.” We see it in his face when a teammate wants to celebrate winning the McDonald's Team Championship in Paris. “It don’t count.” The rest of the season (on the court and on film) will, as the Bulls look for a sixth ring, led by an obsessed Jordan.

The series title comes from coach Phil Jackson’s team handbook that he handed to the players in their first practice of 1997-98. Jackson phrased it as a question but there is no question that at this dance it is Jordan calling the tune.

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