ESPN’s 10-part “The Last Dance” documentary concluded with Michael Jordan’s sixth championship, the Chicago Bulls opting to rebuild rather than pursue a seventh and coach Phil Jackson OK with walking away but Jordan disappointed.
Director Jason Hehir did a tremendous job putting together an enormously entertaining nonfiction saga, yet he owes a tremendous debt to Jackson.
Jackson not only dubbed the 1997-98 Bulls season “The Last Dance” 23 years ago, but also conducted the ritualistic burning of players’ sentiments about the group at season’s end to facilitate the grieving process that gave the series’ ending a special poignance.
Throw in a reprise from Episode 1 of Jordan’s quote right after arriving in Chicago in 1984 — “I just want the franchise, the Chicago Bulls, to be respected as a team, like the Lakers or the Philadelphia 76ers or the Boston Celtics” — and the conclusion of “The Last Dance” has undeniable beauty.
“We went from a (bleepy) team to one of the all-time best,” Jordan says. “All you needed was one little match to start that whole fire.”
The Bulls win the 1998 NBA Finals rematch with the Jazz in six games, thanks to Jordan taking on much of the burden in the clincher because Scottie Pippen’s back was giving him trouble.
“Anybody that would have a notion that Scottie Pippen was a soft player is patently absurd,” Bulls trainer Chip Schaefer says. “He’s as tough a player and intense a competitor as anybody that I’ve worked with. What he did in Game 6 was extraordinary. I know so many players that would have tapped out without hesitation in that situation.”
Jordan famously hits a jumper over Bryon Russell of the Jazz with 5.2 seconds left to put the Bulls up by two. But it’s Ron Harper who tips a shot by John Stockton to seal the victory. (It feels as though Harper’s contributions throughout the second three-peat deserved greater prominence.)
Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf offers Jackson a chance to return as coach, despite general manager Jerry Krause promising Jackson he would be gone at season’s end even if the team went 82-0.
Jackson didn’t want to keep working with Krause and vice versa. Krause was set on rebuilding, and Jackson says it was a good time to leave.
Reinsdorf says he doesn’t think the core components of the 1997-98 Bulls would have returned, but Jordan could have if he wanted and maybe been on a championship-caliber team in a few years.
Jordan, who would return only if Jackson did too, says he thinks the ’98 champs could — and should — have stayed together for another title defense.
“It’s maddening because I felt like we could have won seven. I really believe that,” MJ says. “We may not have, but, man, just to not be able to try, that’s something that I just can’t accept. For whatever reason, I just can’t accept it.”
Best anecdote
Pippen spent much of “The Last Dance” upset about his pay and how Bulls management treated him. So who would have guessed he would be so gracious when it comes to Krause, who did not come off especially well overall?
“I’ve had a lot of great people in my life, and that’s why my success happened,” Pippen says. “I played with Phil Jackson, the greatest coach in the game; Michael Jordan, the greatest player in the game; Jerry Krause, obviously the greatest general manager in the game.”
Second-best anecdote
Carmen Electra describes yet another “detour” for then-boyfriend Dennis Rodman. This time it’s to the Detroit area, rather than Las Vegas, as he ditches the Bulls between Games 3 and 4 of the 1998 NBA Finals to make $250,000 at a pro wrestling show with Hulk Hogan.
Even more amusing is watching Rodman sneak out a side door at the United Center the next day, sprinting up stairs to avoid answering questions from 300-some reporters (although it wasn’t much fun for the reporters at the time).
Best vintage clip
Game 6 of the 1998 Bulls-Jazz NBA Finals is always something to behold, especially in the last minute or so. Stockton breaks a tie with a 3-pointer with 41 seconds remaining only to have Jordan score, steal the ball from Karl Malone and score again.
Some accuse Jordan of pushing Russell to set up the game-winner, but NBC’s Bob Costas doesn’t buy it.
“Russell was already stumbling away,” he recalls. “That hand on his backside was the equivalent of a maitre d’ showing someone to their table.”
Runner-up vintage clip
Remember Isiah Thomas refusing to shake Jordan’s hand after the Bulls eliminated the “Bad Boys” Pistons in 1991? Then you probably appreciate seeing the Jazz’s Malone boarding the Bulls bus at the Delta Center to congratulate MJ and others.
Best insult
“And the Bulls began to rebuild.”
That’s the last thing on screen before the credits roll in “The Last Dance,” punctuating the list of departures that followed the Bulls’ sixth title in eight years. And for Bulls fans waiting 22 years now to return to the NBA Finals, it hurts.
Overstatement of the episode
“I want to tell Jerry Reinsdorf he better bring them back because if he doesn’t, we’re going to run him out of town on a rail,” a fan says at the Bulls’ 1998 championship rally in Grant Park.
Obviously, none of that happened.
Understatement of the episode
“In ’92 the NBA was in 80 countries and now the NBA is in 215 countries,” the late Commissioner David Stern says. “Anyone who understands that phenomenon and that historical arc will understand that Michael Jordan and his era played an incredibly important part in that. He advanced us tremendously.”
Best bit about how good Jordan was
“Michael Jordan at this advanced stage of his career has to carry the team,” Costas says, looking back. “He has to play extra minutes in a grueling series, and that last sequence in the final half-minute-plus (of Game 6) is one of the greatest sequences you’ll ever see in any sport.”
Best out-of-context quote
“The one thing I do know is my heart, my soul, my love has always gone to the city of Chicago,” Jordan, who no longer lives in Chicago, says at the 1998 Grant Park rally. “And I do know, no matter what happens, my heart and my soul and my love will still be in the city of Chicago.”
Most interesting thing that goes unmentioned
Everyone on the 1998 Bulls championship team would have been a year older as they chased a seventh title. Rodman, for example, played just 35 games over the next two seasons. How does Jordan figure his supporting cast would have been durable enough to weather another title chase?
Quote that neatly fits an overriding theme of the series
“There are great players who don’t have an impact beyond their sport, and then there are certain sports figures who become a larger cultural force,” former Chicago resident Barack Obama says.
“Michael Jordan helped to create a different way in which people thought about the African-American athlete, a different way in which people saw athletics as part of the entertainment business. He became an extraordinary ambassador not just for basketball, but I think for the United States overseas and part of American culture sweeping the globe. Michael Jordan and the Bulls changed the culture.”