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Michael Jordan and Horace Grant, back in the day, in The last Dance.
Photo: Nathaniel S. Butler / Netflix
Over the next five weeks, ESPN will give a glorious gift to a private sports audience.
That gift is The last Dance, a ten-part docuseries on the rise of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls that pays special attention to their 1997-1998 season, when the team won its sixth NBA championship and ended one of the most dominant reigns in history. of modern sport. . The television event was originally slated to debut in June, no doubt with the goal of maximizing promotional opportunities during this year’s NBA playoffs and finals. But without the NBA season and without professional athletics of any kind during the coronavirus pandemic, ESPN decided to change the release date to April 19. Look, was that it or broadcast indefinite replays of the socially distant NBA / WNBA HORSE competition. The correct choice was obvious.
The last Dance It would have been a great sports documentary widely consumed under any circumstances. But in the difficult and difficult times experienced by Americans and people around the world, it will be revered as an oasis filled with drama and dunking in times of drought. The series effectively meets a series of boxes that the public desperately needs to check:
1. It gives people something to watch, and, with two-hour episodes every Sunday from this week through May 17, something they can expect at the end of each long, long week.
2. Provides sports-related and new content, albeit driven by looking back.
3. It thrives on a deeply nostalgic streak for anyone who has followed Jordan and the Bulls, or simply misses the 1990s. On the flashback front of the 90s, The last Dance it has it all: oversized blazers galore; images of Jordan filming Nike commercials with Spike Lee; images of Jordan filming the movie Space jam; montages of the Bulls killing him on the court to the music of Prince, Run-D.M.C., Soul Coughing, and Blahzay Blahzay; and even images of Jerry Seinfeld visiting M.J. in the locker room. (“By the way, this isn’t going to work,” Seinfeld jokes as he leaves, pointing to a play on the board. I’m pretty sure Phil Jackson didn’t take note.)
4. Give everyone a docuseries to experiment and discuss that it is not Tiger king. 🙌
The last Dance It is wide-ranging. During its ten hours, directed by sports documentary filmmaker Jason Hehir, it tracks the Bulls’ culminating path to a sixth championship, but it also goes back in time to explain the story of how Michael Jordan went from UNC Tar Heel to NBA icon and one of the most famous people on planet Earth. It also tracks the evolution of the Bulls in the late 1980s and ’90s, tells the story of Scottie Pippen, and reviews Dennis Rodman’s appearance as a skilled Chicago Bulls defender and pop-cultural rarity.
I like O.J .: Made in America, another ESPN production, The last Dance it goes long and deep in its theme. Unlike that Oscar-winning project, this one doesn’t delve as deeply into the racial and socio-political issues that the Simpson story arc naturally raised. Hehir, who spent eight hours conducting new interviews with Jordan, as well as others, and had hours and hours of behind-the-scenes scenes from the Bulls’ song season of the Bulls, filmed by NBA Entertainment, offers a more complicated experience and sincere. Portrait of the famous private Jordan that we have seen before. If you’ve ever admired Jordan, is there anyone who hasn’t? – I followed the Bulls, or like basketball, it is an unmissable television.
The first episode of Docuseries relates how Bulls general manager (and Jordan’s enemy) Jerry Krause told Phil Jackson at the beginning of the 1997–98 season that this would be his last season as head coach, leading to Jordan to announce that if Jackson didn’t come back, he wouldn’t either. Knowing in advance that the next few months would mark the likely end of a dynasty, Jackson called the season “The Last Dance,” and made his mission instantly clear: The Bulls would aim to win a third consecutive championship and sixth overall, a unprecedented event. three pipes.
From there, the series’ timeline scrolls back and forth and interweaves images from old games, news coverage, and interviews that provide context for the entire story that is streamed through a variety of sources, including Jordan’s mother and brothers, numerous NBA players, former NBA Commissioner David Stern, journalists and Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (initially identified as “former Chicago residents”). The main events of this period are covered: impressive championship victories, rivalries with the Detroit Pistons and the New York Knicks, Pippen’s triumphs and frustrations with the administration, the Dream Team, the murder of Jordan’s father and his impact on the icon, Jordan’s temporary retirement and short career search in baseball, and Dennis Rodman’s wild hair and habits. (Note to anyone who wants to: I’d happily see a docuseries that focuses solely on Rodman’s brief romance with Madonna.)
What emerges more and more as the episodes progress is how intense Jordan is, not only on the court but also off the court. There was once speculation that he had a gambling addiction. The last Dance It covers that too, but what Jordan admits to being addicted to everything else is winning. What seems to have fueled him more than anything was rancor. In just one example out of many, Jordan says he focused a lot on beating Dan Majerle of the Phoenix Suns in the 1993 NBA Finals simply because Jerry Krause, whom Jordan couldn’t overstate, thought Majerle was a good defender. “That was enough for me,” says Jordan.
The guy can also hold a grudge until he practically strangles him. He’s still upset that the Detroit Pistons, including Isiah Thomas, walked off the ground without shaking hands after the Bulls beat them in the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals. Hehir hands Jordan an iPad so he can See the interview with Thomas, made for this documentary, in which the former player minimizes the importance of not shaking hands. Before even looking at him, Jordan scoffs. “You can show me what you want. There’s no way to convince myself that he wasn’t an asshole. “Seeing Jordan react to other interviews is one of the joys of this experience. (This seems like a good place to note that ESPN to air an uncensored version of The last Dance, in which salty language abounds, including F-bombs, while ESPN2 will show a version in which that language is edited, for those planning to watch with kids.)
Jordan’s image, which he and his managers painstakingly cultivated with shoe lines and commercials to create a brand that is still viable today, has always been polished, though it certainly has received some, ahem, knots in recent years. But it’s still rare to hear people, including Jordan himself, admit how difficult it can be, at least on a network like ESPN.
“Make no mistake,” says Will Perdue, who played alongside Jordan in the Bulls from 1988 to 1995. “He was a jerk. He was a jerk. Then he adds,” As time goes by and you think about what he was trying to achieve, he was a great teammate. “That echoes what several of Jordan’s teammates say: they didn’t necessarily love him, but he made them better.
At one point, in episode seven, Jordan acknowledges that viewers watch The last Dance you can conclude that he was a tyrant. “I don’t have to do this,” he says, a reference, it seems, to being interviewed for the docuseries. “I only do it because he is who I am. This is how I played the game. That was my mentality. If you don’t want to play that way, don’t play that way.” He begins to cry, at which point he says, “Break.”
The point of The last Dance not to tarnish Jordan’s reputation. It is, among other things, to show us that even a man often regarded as the GOAT of basketball, and perhaps of sport in general, has flaws and struggles that are still taken into account, long after he has retired. Bringing us back to that period when the Chicago Bulls were practically untouchable and Michael Jordan was considered a god among humans, it also reminds us of how he felt the first time we saw greatness, in the form of a man, with the tongue out. a little boy, taking flight again and again, right before our eyes.
