Michael Jordan was one of the greatest athletes in the world in the 1990s, and even that typing underestimates how well-known and popular he was. Two decades later, a new ten-part documentary, with the skeleton of the special NBA season 1997/1998 of the Chicago Bulls, gives a unique perspective on the best basketball player ever.
It started as an innocent game. A handful of Chicago Bulls players lined up on the sidelines at the three-point mark after training, and the first to hit was the winner.
“When Michael saw us do that, he had to get involved,” said Steve Kerr, Jordan’s teammate at the Bulls from 1995 through 1998, with a smile over twenty years later. “And before we knew it, it was about money and Michael won almost every day.”
After his entry into the NBA in 1984, Jordan became famous for his athleticism, his spectacular dunks that earned him the nicknames ‘Air Jordan’ and ‘His Airness’. But the shooting guard became the best basketball player in the world, the man who led the Bulls to no fewer than six titles in eight years between 1991 and 1998, for his unparalleled will to win.
“Michael always craved competition, which made him who he was,” said Kerr. “I always felt that an important part of Michael Jordan’s greatness was that he raised the bar every day for everyone around him. Just because of how he was as a person.”
Jordan was the perfect partner for this project
For nearly twenty years, an archive contained more than ten thousand hours of historical images. An NBA Entertainment camera crew was given permission to film the Bulls of Jordan everywhere in the 1997/1998 season, but that material was far from useful.
To get that unique behind-the-scenes look, Adam Silver, now the NBA’s boss and NBA Entertainment’s boss in 1997, made a deal with the star of the project: A documentary wouldn’t come until Jordan agreed gives.
The man who always wants to have control over everything, was given the opportunity to take complete control of the ultimate document of his life. But the result was also that one after another filmmaker knocked on Jordan’s door in vain. Until a producer with the name Mike Tollin proposed in 2016 an hour-long personal conversation with Jordan that it would be a long documentary, with multiple episodes.
The result is The Last Dance, a documentary of ten one-hour episodes, the first two of which can be seen on Netflix in the Netherlands from Monday. “Michael was the perfect partner for this project,” said director Jason Hehir, who spent a total of eight hours of interviews with Jordan at three different times in 2018 and 2019.
“From the first moment, Michael was surprisingly candid and willing to discuss all relevant topics. Such as the murder of his father in 1993 and the effect it had on him, or the stories that he was addicted to gambling in the 1990s. Michael told us never asked to leave anything out and he told me from day one that there was no question he wouldn’t answer truthfully. “
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Michael Jordan and coach Phil Jackson celebrate their sixth NBA title together. (Photo: Reuters)
Jordan dominated the NBA in every possible way
Before the start of the 1997/1998 season, everyone at the Bulls already knew they would be entering the final year of one of the best basketball teams ever. Almost all contracts expired, Jordan was 34 now, and the only coach he wanted to play with, Phil Jackson, was told by technical director Jerry Krause to leave after the season anyway.
Jackson, who won a total of eleven NBA titles as a coach with the Bulls and later with the Los Angeles Lakers, was a master of motivating his squad and therefore coined the term ‘The Last Dance’. It had to lead his team to the championship one more time after 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996 and 1997.
That worked, despite quite a few hurdles. Scottie Pippen, the best player after Jordan, was injured for half the season and had an argument with the Bulls’ management. Unguided missile Dennis Rodman had to be picked up by Jordan himself from Las Vegas, where he was on a short vacation with girlfriend Carmen Electra. And Jordan told just before the playoffs ESPN that it was time to replace Krause. “We all realized this would be the end,” said Kerr.
Because of all those struggles, and the positive ending, the 1997/1998 season is the ideal vehicle to show an entirely new generation 22 years later how great the basketball player Jordan was. Michael was in the 1990s larger than life“He was immensely popular,” said Kerr. “He dominated the NBA in every way.”
“I don’t think we need to tell fans under thirty who Michael Jordan is,” said Executive Producer Connor Schell. “But I don’t know if they really understand how good Jordan was, how dominant his teams were and what they meant for basketball and popular culture. We hope to show that up close in this documentary.”
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With this famous shot, Michael Jordan decided the 1998 NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz. (Photo: Getty Images)
The first two episodes of The Last Dance can be seen on Netflix in the Netherlands from Monday. The next five weeks there will be two new episodes every Monday.
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