That said, I'm so happy we didn't get Jordan in the Twitter era. It adds to his mystique. It's why videos like this or him dancing with the Hornets while smoking a cigar blows up. Before The Last Dance we itched for any sort of Jordan content. If he was playing during the Twitter era, we get it all. The mystique is gone. 'The Last Dance': Twitter Reacts to Michael Jordan's 'Flu Game' Being the Result of Bad Pizza By Zach Seemayer‍ 10:28 PM PDT, May 17, 2020 ESPN Films/Netflix/Mandalay Sports Media/NBA Entertainment. ESPN’s 10-part documentary The Last Dance, which centers on Michael Jordan and the ’90s Bulls and features previously unseen footage from the 1997-98 season, finally came to an end last night.

© Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports Michael Jordan has taken notice that star athletes are under the microscope at all times due to social media.

Today’s athletes play in a different media environment than their predecessors did. The proliferation of social media means that star athletes are under the microscope at all times in a way that even the most famous athletes of previous eras weren’t.

Michael Jordan, for one, has taken notice. And he thinks that things would have been a lot harder for him had he played in the social media era. Jordan told Cigar Aficionado, via Alex Kennedy of Basketball News:

“Tiger [Woods] played at his peak somewhere toward the end of my career. Then, what changed from that timeframe to now is social media — Twitter and all those types of things. And that has invaded the personalities and personal time of individuals. It’s to the point where some people have been able to utilize it to their financial gain and things of that nature.

“But for someone like myself — and this is what Tiger deals with — I don’t know if I could’ve survived in this Twitter [era], where you don’t have the privacy that you’d want and what seems to be very innocent can always be misinterpreted.”

Michael B Jordan Twitter

Jordan is a notoriously private figure. In ESPN’s “The Last Dance” documentary, he discussed how his immense fame deprived him of privacy, and part of the reason for his retirement was to get out of the spotlight. Late in his career, he could hardly go anywhere and was essentially holed up in his room all the time. That all happened despite living in a world without social media.

Jordan’s position is understandable. If something like this happened in today’s world, it would be all over the internet.

Michael Jordan Twitter Account

Subscribe to Yardbarker's Morning Bark, the most comprehensive newsletter in sports. Customize your email to get the latest news on your favorite sports, teams and schools. Emailed daily. Always free! Sign up now ▸

More must-reads:

Related slideshow: The 25 best NBA nicknames of all time (Provided by Yardbarker)