Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Last Dance’ On ESPN, Chronicling Michael Jordan And The Chicago Bulls’ Last Championship Run

The Last Dance is a 10-part docuseries about the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, the last of the six Bulls championship teams in the 1990s. As director Jason Hehir (The ’85 Bears) meticulously goes through that season, from the first days of the preseason through the NBA Finals win against the Utah Jazz, he references the past events that got Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, coach Phil Jackson, GM Jerry Krause, and all the supporting players to that final championship.

THE LAST DANCE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: From the rear, we see Michael Jordan sitting on a bench in front of a picture window in what we imagine is his massive home.

The Gist: Part 1 sets the scene: The Bulls were coming off their fifth championship, and Krause, along with team owner Jerry Reinsdorf, were eager to start rebuilding the team, thinking that most of the players around Jordan had passed their productive primes. Pippen was hurt, having elected to get surgery on his ankle right before the ’97-98 season began instead of after the previous season ended, just to stick it to Krause over refusing to renegotiate his contract. Jackson’s contract renewal was also fraught, leading to Reinsdorf to intervene and get a one-year contract done for what Krause immediately announced was Jackson’s last season.

In interviews with all the principals (except for Krause, who died in 2017), there was no small amount of tension between players and the front office at the time. MJ and Pippen thought nothing of publicly disrespecting Krause at every turn. But MJ’s rationale is that the front office shouldn’t be breaking the team up while it’s still winning.

We then flash back to Jordan’s college days at the University of North Carolina under the legendary coach Dean Smith, and how he improved during his freshman year to the point where he was trusted to take the winning shot in the 1982 NCAA Championship Game. It also discusses how much of a joke the Bulls were before they drafted Jordan with the 3rd pick of the 1984 draft (Jordan laughs heartily when told the team was called the “traveling cocaine circus”). Jordan’s first season, where he took the league by storm, is documented through various Chicago journalists and “former Chicago resident” Barack Obama.

Part 2 examines Pippen’s early life, from his days as one of 12 children in rural Arkansas to his college career at the relatively-unknown University of Central Arkansas (“Former Arkansas Governor” Bill Clinton is interviewed here). The episode also examines Jordan’s childhood and how competitive he was with his brothers, how Jordan didn’t even make the varsity team in his sophomore year in high school, but by the time he graduated, he was one of the most-recruited HS athletes in the country. Jordan’s foot injury that cost him much of his second season is also examined, setting up his adversarial nature with Krause and the front office, and the ’97-98 Bulls’ early-season struggles without Pippen are documented.

Our Take: People have been looking forward to The Last Dance, a joint production between ESPN and Netflix —the documentary is streaming on Netflix everywhere but the US, Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but US residents will breathe a sigh of relief to learn that The Last Dance arrives on Netflix on July 19— since the docuseries was announced, but with the shutdown of all sports due to the coronavirus pandemic, the series has been even more eagerly anticipated — 6.1 million people watched this past weekend’s premiere. And the docuseries delivers, for the most part. We just wonder if the timing of this series could have been better, for one big reason.

As many stories about the show have explained, Krause is more or less set up as the “bad guy” of the series, who was champing at the bit to rebuild the team without Jordan, Pippen or Jackson. In fact, he started recruiting Jackson’s eventual successor, Tim Floyd, even before the ’97-98 season started. But, because Krause died right as the series was being conceived, Hehir didn’t get a chance to interview him (fortunately, he did get a chance to talk to former NBA commissioner David Stern, who died this past New Year’s Day). So we see images of a seemingly paranoid Krause walking to his car at the team’s practice facility, and other accounts of MJ and Pippen treating him like crap, and Krause, the architect of six championship teams, has no chance to defend himself.

Otherwise, the access Hehir had to all the principals, along with the two former presidents he talks to, is impressive. Even though the style of the series is similar to ESPN’s 30 For 30 documentaries (even though it’s not under that rubric), the 10-part format gives him the room to couch the final championship season in the events that came before it. Did we already know that Jordan and the Bulls were the most famous sports team on the planet in the ’90s, and that MJ was one of the world’s most famous people? And that MJ was extremely tough on his teammates? Yes and Yes. But seeing it in action via the extensive footage shot during that season reminds the viewers of just how dominant Jordan and the Bulls were back then (after all, it was 22 years ago).

Sex and Skin: Perhaps when MJ talks about going into a teammate’s hotel room during a rookie-year road trip and seeing people doing lines, smoking weed, and entertaining female groupies, but that’s about it.

Parting Shot: At the end of Part 2, we see archival footage of news reports involving Pippen’s request for a trade midway through the ’97-98 season.

Sleeper Star: Despite the presence of the big names in the documentary — Dennis Rodman is also interviewed — we’re happy to see Bulls role players like Steve Kerr, John Paxson and Bill Wennington. Too bad we don’t hear from folks like Toni Kukoč, a key player on the final three championship teams after a rocky start during the first year MJ was in his baseball-playing exile in 1993.

Most Pilot-y Line: None we can think of.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you’re one of those people who thought the ’90s was the pinnacle of the NBA (like we do), then The Last Dance should bring back some fond memories of those dominant Bulls teams of the decade. And the access that the filmmakers have gotten makes this series all the more fascinating to watch.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream The Last Dance On ESPN.com