“The Last Dance” Michael Jordan documentary: Recap and social media reactions to the first two premiere episodes

5 years ago

The 1997-98 Chicago Bulls were a team at a crossroads.

Michael Jordan & Co. were coming off their second straight championship — and fifth in seven years — but there were questions about whether this group could run it back and win another.

And that’s where “The Last Dance” begins. The much-anticipated 10-part docuseries premiered with the first two episodes on Sunday night, and the entire internet seemed to come together to watch the behind-the-scenes look at the final year of the Chicago Bulls dynasty, starting from the very beginning.

The opening scenes of Part 1 focused on the challenges facing the Bulls heading into that final season, particularly the prospect of a rebuild and the disconnect between the players, namely Jordan, and general manager Jerry Krause.

From there, “The Last Dance” turned back the clock to the early 80s, just before Jordan joined the organization — a time when, according to Bulls owner Jerry Reisndorf, the team was being outdrawn by an indoor soccer squad.

At the same time, Jordan was blossoming into a true basketball star at the University of North Carolina. He didn’t join the Tar Heels fully formed; instead, as his coaches and teammates recalled, he soaked up everything he could like a sponge, vowing to become the best player in UNC history:

… and, of course, it was mission accomplished on that front. Jordan hit the game winner to seal UNC’s 1982 championship as a freshman, and only got better from there before declaring for the 1984 NBA Draft.

When Jordan left Chapel Hill, he entered a whole new world — not just as an NBA player. As Jordan tells it in “The Last Dance,” the Bulls teams of his early career were notorious for recreational drug use, particularly cocaine, something Jordan wanted no part of.

Both culturally and on the court, Jordan made an immediate impact as a rookie. By his third game against the Milwaukee Bucks, Jordan was already showing glimpses of the legend he would become, helping lead the Bulls back from a nine-point third quarter deficit against a team that previously had Chicago’s number:

By the end of that rookie season, Jordan’s skill was already capturing the attention of his future rivals — and future Presidents:

(And as an aside, the internet loved how President Obama was introduced on the broadcast…)

From 1985, “The Last Dance” flashed forward back to 1997, as the Bulls took part in an exhibition tour in Paris ahead of the season. Jordan dominated, giving an international audience exactly what it wanted … but when Chicago came home, it was time to get down to business.

According to the documentary, Phil Jackson had a tradition of naming a theme for each season. And for 1997-98, that theme was, well, “The Last Dance.” The team knew this was their last hurrah together, which made winning a sixth championship all the more important.

Appropriately, then, Part 1 ended with the Bulls receiving their 1997 championship rings and turning the page to their final year … all with that iconic music playing, naturally.

Fortunately, we moved right on to Part 2, which shifted its lens from Jordan to the man who perhaps most helped MJ get to the pinnacle: Scottie Pippen.

In Jordan’s own words, “I didn’t win without Scottie Pippen. That’s why I consider him my best teammate of all time.”

Pippen took a far different route to dynasty than Jordan did. He wasn’t highly recruited, and didn’t necessarily have dreams of playing in the NBA. But he was persistent, and he grew up as an incredibly well-rounded player. The fact that he grew five inches between his freshman and sophomore years of college helped take those guard-based skills and turn Pippen into the Swiss army knife he’d become at the next level.

Pippen became a sensational player in his own right, but he admitted in “The Last Dance” that he immediately recognized that Jordan was something special. The two formed a fast friendship that became the perfect, complementary relationship on the court:

For all his incredible skill, though, Pippen was incredibly underpaid, due to a long-term deal he signed in 1991, just before league revenue and player salaries took a leap. Pippen felt he had to sign the deal in order to make sure the people in his life were taken care of, and that meant he was locked in on a seven-year deal at $3 million a year:

Because Pippen felt underpaid, he delayed surgery on his problematic back in an attempt to force the front office to renegotiate a deal — and that left the Bulls without Pippen to start the 1997-98 season.

Pippen’s absence exacerbated the Bulls’ issues, giving the two-time defending champions a veneer of vulnerability. As the losses piled up, Jordan came down hard on his teammates and tried to carry the team on his own, on and off the court.

It’s the Jordan we know: unrelenting, unable to accept losing, competitive to a fault. But where did that Jordan come from?

Part 2 of “The Last Dance” pointed to Jordan’s childhood as the genesis of that fire. His parents pushed him to use his intelligence and drive to earn things in life, not wait for them to be handed to him. But perhaps more importantly, Jordan was driven to competition by sibling rivalry. He fought with his brother, both physically and for his father’s attention.

Then, as you almost certainly know, Jordan failed to make his high school basketball team, which further stoked that competitive flame. And from that crucible, Michael Jordan was formed.

The Bulls got their first real taste of that legendary competitiveness in Jordan’s second season, when he suffered a broken foot. Unknown to the team, Jordan got back to playing basketball as quickly as he could — 90 minutes a day, by his own admission — which left the calf on the leg of his injured foot stronger than on his uninjured leg. He insisted that he come back for the Bulls, regardless of the risk:

The two sides reached a compromise: Jordan would play seven minutes per half, and absolutely no more. So for 14 minutes, Jordan went “absolutely ballistic” in the most important moments of each game. It seemed to work, until a late-season game against the Indiana Pacers. With just 13 seconds remaining and the Bulls down 1, Jordan had reached his limit, and then coach Stan Albeck refused to put him back in.

John Paxson hit the game winner, but the damage was done. Jordan believed the organization had prioritized losing and the prospect of a better draft pick over doing everything to make the postseason. From that point on, the relationship between the Bulls front office and its star player would never be the same.

Yet the Bulls did make the postseason, drawing a first-round matchup with the fabled Boston Celtics. And in Game 2 of that series, His Airness poured in 63, prompting Larry Bird to compare Jordan to, well, God.

And it was all Danny Ainge’s fault.

Of course, we couldn’t get through a Michael Jordan documentary without a LeBron comparison or two…

But anyway, back to the Bulls! With Jordan proving his prowess, Chicago needed to make some changes in order to become a title contender. Krause moved one of Jordan’s closest confidantes, Charles Oakley, to the Knicks for Bill Cartwright, giving the Bulls a big man presence they desperately needed. Those moves led to the first three-peat, proving that Krause knew what he was doing when it came to making the team better.

In 1997-98, however, that meant kicking the tires on trades for Pippen. Krause wanted to make the move to extend the Bulls’ window beyond 1998, but ownership and the players were adamant that Pippen wasn’t going anywhere. He stayed, but things got personal between Krause and Pippen, the latter of whom openly took shots at and ridiculed the Chicago GM.

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