My latest Chicago Tribune column features an interview with the author of a new biography on Michael Jordan. Comprehensive is an understatement.

You also can access the column via my Twitter feed at @Sherman_Report.

From the column:

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At nearly 700 pages, you might wish Michael Jordan’s career lasted as long as the new biography on him.

“I actually cut 300 pages,” said author Roland Lazenby. “It was a challenge trying to figure out what to take out.”

The pared-down version, “Michael Jordan: The Life,” is set for its official release Tuesday. Books on No. 23 always make for good business, with previous efforts by Sam Smith, David Halberstam, Bob Greene, and even Jordan himself, rising to the top of the bestseller lists.

Yet Lazenby’s book could be viewed as the first truly comprehensive biography on Jordan—at least the most definitive since he retired from basketball for the last time in 2003. Lazenby begins his story by tracing his family’s roots as sharecroppers and moonshiners in North Carolina and goes through his days as a multi-million owner of the Charlotte Bobcats.

“Michael has had a huge, huge life,” Lazenby said. “It’s a business story, a basketball story, a baseball story, a cultural story, a family story, and I could go on.”

Lazenby’s vast research didn’t produce any new stunning revelations about Jordan. It hardly will come as a surprise that he lost $5 million one night gambling in Las Vegas. A bit more surprising is that Lazenby’s source for that information is Adam “Pac Man” Jones.

This book, though, is more about trying to explain what led to him becoming his generation’s Babe Ruth as a sports icon. Lazenby presents a rapid-fire delivery of anecdotes along with insights from those with inside connections that help paint the overall portrait of a highly complex man. The key word for Lazenby is “context.”

“Context helps us understand what we’ve been getting from Michael all these years,” said Lazenby, who previously wrote “Blood on the Horns” about the end of the Bulls dynasty.
“There were many subtle, but sledge-hammer type things that show the urgency that Michael bought to everything.”