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Michael Jordan was one of the best athletes in the world in the 1990s, and even that typing underestimates how well-known and popular he was. Two decades later, a new ten-part documentary, featuring the skeleton of the Chicago Bulls’ 1997/1998 NBA special season, offers a unique perspective on the best basketball player in history.
It started as an innocent game. A handful of Chicago Bulls players lined up on the sidelines at the three-point mark after practice, and the first to hit was the winner.
“When Michael saw us do that, he had to get involved,” said Steve Kerr, Jordan’s teammate at the Bulls from 1995 to 1998, with a smile more than twenty years later. “And before we knew it, it was about money and Michael made it almost every day.”
After joining the NBA in 1984, Jordan became famous for his athletics, his spectacular dunks that earned him the nicknames ‘Air Jordan’ and ‘His Airness’. But the shooting guard became the best basketball player in the world, the man who led the Bulls to no less than six titles in eight years between 1991 and 1998, for his unmatched will to win.
“Michael always yearned for competition, which made him who he was,” Kerr said. “I always felt that an important part of Michael Jordan’s greatness was that he raised the bar every day for everyone around him. Just because of what he was like as a person.”
Jordan was the perfect partner for this project
For almost twenty years, an archive contained over ten thousand hours of historical images. A team of NBA Entertainment cameramen received permission to film the Bulls of Jordan everywhere in the 1997/1998 season, but that footage was far from useful.
To get that unique behind-the-scenes look, Adam Silver, now NBA boss and NBA Entertainment boss in 1997, struck a deal with the star of the project: A documentary wouldn’t come until Jordan accepted da.
The man who always wants to have control over everything was given the opportunity to take complete control of the last document of his life. But the result was also that one after another filmmaker knocked on Jordan’s door in vain. Until a producer by the name of Mike Tollin proposed in 2016 a one-hour personal conversation with Jordan that would be a long documentary, with multiple episodes.
The result is The last Dance, a documentary of ten one-hour episodes, the first two of which can be seen on Netflix in the Netherlands starting Monday. “Michael was the perfect partner for this project,” said director Jason Hehir, who spent a total of eight hours of interviews with Jordan at three different times in 2018 and 2019.
“From the first moment, Michael was surprisingly sincere and willing to discuss all the relevant issues. Like the murder of his father in 1993 and the effect it had on him, or the stories that he was addicted to gambling in the 1990s. Michael told us he never asked to leave anything out and told me from the first day that there was no doubt that he would not answer honestly. “
Michael Jordan and coach Phil Jackson celebrate their sixth NBA title together. (Photo: Reuters)
Jordan dominated the NBA in every way possible
Before the start of the 1997/1998 season, everyone at the Bulls already knew they would enter the final year of one of the best basketball teams in history. Most of the contracts expired, Jordan was 34 years old, and technical director Jerry Krause told the only coach he wanted to play with, Phil Jackson, to leave after the season anyway.
Jackson, who won a total of eleven NBA titles as coach of the Bulls and later with the Los Angeles Lakers, was a master at motivating his team and thus coined the term “The Last Dance”. He had to lead his team to the championship once again after 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996 and 1997.
That worked, despite some obstacles. Scottie Pippen, the best player after Jordan, was injured during the middle of the season and had a discussion with the Bulls’ management. The unguided missile Dennis Rodman had to be picked up by Jordan himself from Las Vegas, where he was on a short vacation with his girlfriend Carmen Electra. And Jordan said just before the playoffs ESPN it was time to replace Krause. “We all realized this would be the end,” said Kerr.
Due to all those struggles and the positive ending, the 1997/1998 season is the ideal vehicle to show a whole new generation 22 years later how great basketball player Jordan was. Michael was in the 1990s bigger than life“It was immensely popular,” said Kerr. “He dominated the NBA in every way.”
“I don’t think we need to tell fans under the age of thirty who Michael Jordan is,” said executive producer Connor Schell. “But I don’t know if they really understand how good Jordan was, how dominant his teams were and what they meant to basketball and popular culture. We hope to show him up close in this documentary.”
With this famous shot, Michael Jordan decided the 1998 NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz. (Photo: Getty Images)
The first two episodes of The last Dance It can be seen on Netflix in the Netherlands starting Monday. The next five weeks there will be two new episodes every Monday.
