The Last Dance is a Great Nostalgia Trip Disguised as a “So-So Documentary”
ESPN’s documentary does little to nothing to properly explain the culmination of the eventual demise of the greatest dynasty in sports history but it has so many great moments that make you remember how much fun the NBA was in the ‘90s
“The Last Dance” is a very good documentary. There’s nothing really unique or special about it. For the most part it’s fairly tame with profanity laced here and there. That’s basically it.
This isn’t an insult but merely an observation. Fact is the documentary isn’t really doing much to delve deep into the end of the Chicago Bulls Dynasty in the ’90s. When we saw the previews, we thought we were going to get a more in-depth look at the Bulls team, how general manager Jerry Krause wanted to assemble the team, how the Bulls handled themselves after Jordan’s first retirement departure, etc. For the most part they have touched on these subject matters but they’ve only scratched the surface for most of these discussions. Not much else is told other than Jordan’s competitive nature, Phil Jackson’s philosophy as a head coach, Scottie Pippen’s contract dispute, and Dennis Rodman being Dennis Rodman. In other words, it’s stuff you are already pretty familiar with but now you get to have a behind-the-scenes look at how these guys lived their lives and how they played the game.
The documentary also fails to deliver on the most important thesis of the whole thing: why did Jerry Krause and team owner Jerry Reinsdorf feel it was necessary to rebuild the Chicago Bulls immediately after winning the title in 1998?
So far we’ve only gotten some slight answers that delve into that decision but didn’t really do much to clarify the situation. Everybody knew that the Bulls were likely to break up at the end of the 1997–1998 NBA season when Krause didn’t want Phil Jackson to coach the team. Most of the players were committed to the team because of the core that was established. With Jackson gone, it was unlikely that any of the players would come back especially since most of them were going to be free agents and the team wasn’t looking to pay aging players long term money. The documentary never really went deep into that discussion and it’s a shame because that was a missed opportunity for an interesting discussion on whether or not dynasties can last forever (which of course they can’t).
Despite all the flaws of “The Last Dance” it wasn’t really the reason a lot of us were watching the documentary in the first place. To reiterate, it was far from a terrible documentary. It’s well-crafted and Jason Hehir and his team deserve credit for pulling this film off. Even though it’s supposed to be about the Bulls final season, that wasn’t the reason why a lot of us were watching the documentary. “The Last Dance” was primarily a “hot tub time machine” that allowed basketball fans to return to a period where a lot of us had fun memories watching the emergence of the greatest team ever in sports history.
As of this article, we are currently living through a terrible crisis that has ravaged the planet and is crippling everyday social life. There’s no telling when this pandemic will end or if we will ever return to normalcy. The sporting world has come to a complete halt and if things weren’t the way they are, we’d be watching the NBA Conference Finals, the MLB season, the NHL Playoffs, and the WNBA preseason. Unfortunately, all we have are new tapings of wrestling and occasional soccer matches in empty arenas and stadiums. It’s not an ideal position to be in right now.
And yet along comes a documentary that makes people look back in the past and has us recollecting our favorite memories of watching NBA basketball in the late ’80s and all of the 1990s while giving us glimpses of what went on behind the scenes. It’s the kind of nostalgia trip that any person would eat up at this point. A lot of media personnel today exist thanks to the NBA during this period. It’s by far the most fun any of us had watching basketball even compared to the modern age.
Michael Jordan was at the heart of the rising boom of the NBA in the 1990s. He was the central superstar that literally transcended pop culture. It was the kind of feat former commissioner David Stern had always dreamed of: a league driven by star power to generate mass profit. It worked! Jordan and the Bulls were the team to watch every single night. Even if you weren’t the biggest sports fan or even a Chicago Bulls fan, you had to see the Bulls in action because they were a “must-watch” event.
Jordan had an assortment of rivals and each one gave it their all to beat the best player in the world at the time. Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Penny Hardaway, Shaquille O’Neal, Alonzo Mourning, Larry Johnson, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Reggie Miller. Every single one of these players were All Star talents of their own right but not enough to beat the Bulls from their perspective teams. It didn’t matter though. The mere thought of the possibility of watching either the Pacers, the Knicks, the Jazz, the Magic, the Heat, or even the Hornets beating the Bulls was enough to make any fan get hyped during a matchup. Of course, Jordan broke a LOT of hearts as this writer can attest to it. There’s no question that after it was all said and done, the Bulls were the best. No shame in losing to the best.
In the end, “The Last Dance” was merely a fun documentary to watch. It’s far from the best sports documentary. As I originally stated, it does nothing to answer the questions in regards to what led to the Bulls breakup, touches on backgrounds we already know, doesn’t force Jordan to come to grips on his choices after the fact, but I’d lie to you if I said I didn’t have a fun time reminiscing about the “glory days” of the NBA. There are a lot of people that would agree with this sentiment. When it’s all said and done, “The Last Dance” reminds us why we fell in love with basketball in the first place. That’s the best way to find joy during these troubling times.
