UNLV grad Matt Maxson assists with ‘The Last Dance’

He was once a foil for UNLV graduate Matt Maxson. The man who denied his beloved Phoenix Suns the 1993 NBA championship by averaging 41 points, 8.5 rebounds and 6.3 assists in the Finals while introducing to him the agony sports sometimes begets.

But Michael Jordan is no longer a nemesis for Maxson and his boyhood rooting interests.

He’s the subject of his magnum opus, the pinnacle of his production career and the focal point of the masterpiece that’s captivated the country the last four Sunday nights amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Maxson, 33, worked as a producer on “The Last Dance,” the 10-part docuseries chronicling Jordan’s Bulls and their reign atop the NBA. The series provides an unfiltered, intimate look at the man many consider the greatest basketball player — and athlete — of all-time, and concludes Sunday on ESPN with its ninth and 10th episodes.

“It’s humbling,” Maxson says. “We set out on a journey … and we got there in the best way we can hope for when you set out to do this.”

The project, Maxson says, is without a doubt the most challenging and rewarding undertaking of a career he never thought he’d have while studying political science at UNLV. He reviewed more than 10,000 hours of footage and was instrumental in the organizational and editing processes.

“Without his contributions to this thing, there is no documentary,” said the project’s director, Jason Hehir. “His value to this operation is immense and invaluable.”

Becoming a producer

The 1993 Suns ignited in Maxson a passion for sport that accompanied him throughout the curation of “The Last Dance” and drives him to this day. He lived first in Oregon and Los Angeles before moving to Phoenix, where he developed an interest in the NBA as the local team rolled to a 62-20 record and a berth in the Finals.

Jordan and the Bulls “tore my heart out,” he said. But Maxson pressed on as a sports fan while developing a reverence for Jordan and his greatness. He moved from Phoenix to Santa Cruz, California, and Santa Cruz to Las Vegas, graduating from Coronado High School and opting to attend nearby UNLV.

To study political science.

“Mostly, I really just liked the research aspect of things,” he said. “There was a point where I thought I was going to be in politics. But I really didn’t have the stomach for it.”

Fortunately for Maxson, the school’s student newspaper hired him to cover football, and he began learning about sports media and developing valuable friendships in the business. Former Review-Journal boxing writer Kevin Iole emerged as a mentor for Maxson and brought him to local cards to teach him some tricks of the trade.

Maxson eventually parlayed his experiences into a freelance production gig with HBO, for which he’d work in the production truck on fight nights — gaining invaluable experience about television production.

“He was a young guy, but he had the maturity of a 40-year-old,” said Iole, who now covers combat sports for Yahoo Sports. “What really impressed me about him when I’d talk with him at the fights was how much he’d want to learn about the business. … He was a guy who was trying to soak up knowledge and be as good as he could possibly be.”

Maxson graduated from UNLV in 2009 and worked for 18 months in Yuma, Arizona, as a sports writer. HBO in 2010 offered him a full-time role as a junior producer, and he moved to New York to continue his career working on boxing documentaries.

He worked at HBO until 2016 and assisted with the production of the network’s “24/7” docuseries, which chronicled boxers preparing for mega-fights and introduced Maxson to the artistry of the documentary

‘The Last Dance’

More than 100 people were interviewed for the project, and Maxson was in charge of organizing the sound and footage in a way that Hehir and the editors could access efficiently. He was on set for some of the interviews, but mostly worked at the project’s headquarters in New York because his technical expertise was paramount to a production expedited by the pandemic.

“To just kind of see people say ‘Hey, “The Last Dance.” We’ve all been watching it, we’ve all been loving it.’ People are calling me up to talk about it. It’s just very humbling and very gratifying,” Maxson said.

Maxson is watching the series from his New York apartment and laments only that he can not be with the rest of the production team because of the coronavirus.

He follows along with each episode on Twitter and said he was pleasantly surprised by the way the series is uniting the public.

“If you got to tell 22-year old Matt Maxson that, ‘Hey man, at some point, you’re going to do a 10-part Michael Jordan documentary for Netflix, and the whole world is going to be watching it.’ … I think I would say to myself, ‘That’s amazing,’ ” Maxson said. “But that’s the best part about this. I don’t know what the next 10 years will be. I’m going to be excited about what’s next.”

Contact reporter Sam Gordon at sgordon@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BySamGordon on Twitter.