The first two parts the highly anticipated ten-part The Last Dance documentary chronicling the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls was released this Sunday to much fanfare.
As someone who was alive and ,thankfully, of age to have lived through it was a pleasant trip down memory lane and I felt like that teenage version of myself that gathered around the television for so many weekends during that season to watch the Bulls and the NBA on NBC. I am ecstatic that a new generation of basketball fans will receive a proper introduction to that team and those players in a way that does not come off that the cliché “well back in my day… .”
So here is a brief synopsis of my thoughts on the docimentary:
What I liked
- I enjoyed how it was laid out in terms giving that expositional information on the state of Chicago Bulls basketball prior to the 1984 draft , so when the glory years finally come it really is staggering how far the franchise came.
- I found the portion on Scottie Pippen very interesting. I actually did not know about what happened to his father or his brother and to dig up game footage of him when he balled at Central Arkansas shows they producers did their homework.
- The documentary dug into the acrimony that existed between Phil Jackson and Micheal Jordan towards GM Jerry Krause and where that stemmed from but I had forgotten how much rancor Pippen had for Krause and Bulls brass.
- The accounting of the fight that MJ had to engage in to return after he broke his foot in the 1985-86 season. Him returning that year was a real point of contention and somewhat the antithesis of how similar situations play out these days.
What I was not a fan of:
- Having to wait a week for more episodes
Episodes 3 and 4 will air this Sunday, April 26 at 9:00 p.m. EST on ESPN.
