Barack Obama given strange title in Michael Jordan documentary 'The Last Dance'

‘I thought I recognised that former Chicago resident’

Barack Obama was given an unusual title in the Michael Jordan docuseries The Last Dance.

The ESPN series, which documents the basketball hall-of-famer’s 1997/1998 season with the Bulls, aired its first two episodes on Sunday night.

The former US president was featured in interview snippets, where he talked about the Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan.

Mr Obama appeared on screen to talk about Mr Jordan’s impact on Chicago, but viewers were surprised that he wasn’t billed as the former president.

On screen, Mr Obama was billed as: “Barack Obama Former Chicago resident.”

Twitter users were quick to mock the title given to Mr Obama, who served as US president from 2009 to 2017.

Huffpost front page editor Phillip Lewis tweeted: “I thought I recognized that former Chicago resident.”

Twitter user @dreamiedarko added that Mr Obama should have been billed as the “first Black president.”

He tweeted: “So we just gonna ignore the fact that they called Barack Obama ‘Former Chicago Resident’??”

However, Mr Obama was not the only former president to be given a less impressive billing, as user @Cade_Onder pointed out.

He tweeted: “Imagine having the pull to get two former United States presidents for your basketball documentary and calling them “Former Chicago Resident” and ‘Former Arkansas Governor.’”

Director of The Last Dance, Jason Hehir, told the Athletic that he only wanted to include people with established names, if they had something interesting to say about Mr Jordan.

“That is a Michael thing,” Mr Hehir said. “Barack Obama is not the kind of guy that I can find his number and text him. Michael had a connection. But I was pretty adamant that we don’t have people in here who don’t have an organic connection to the story.”

In the show, Mr Obama revealed that he didn’t have the money to buy tickets for Chicago Bulls games when Mr Jordan played, but said that he and the whole city galvanised around the star.

Mr Hehir added he wasn’t sure about including Mr Clinton and had to decide whether the former president was going to add something interesting to the series.

“My question was, okay, what is Bill Clinton going to say that is different than any other fan would say about watching Michael play? Why should he be considered an authority on basketball just because he’s Bill Clinton?” he said.