Jordan Takes the Lead on The Last Dance

The Last Dance arrived early and, with it, a reprieve from a nearly barren sporting landscape borne of a global pandemic. With beautifully restored footage, a slick soundtrack, and a celebrity-laden cast, ESPN and Netflix invite the viewer to bear witness to a Chicago Bulls dynasty that amassed six championships between 1991 and 1998. The equivalent of a feature-length film per week, the documentary could have offered ten more parts without complaint or filler. Brimming with a variety of characters, conflicts, and, of course, championship champagne showers, ESPN continues its reign as an innovative industry leader in long-form visual storytelling. Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of the documentary is the two-version model—an edited and unedited option for viewers to determine whether they want the "family-friendly" version or not. In doing so, the viewer who opts in for each f-bomb might sense she is taking in something raw or authentic, even as early on it's apparent that the series is heavily skewed toward a particular narrative dictated by the film's centerpiece, none other than His Airness, Michael Jordan.

In the final episode, a variety of sports broadcasting voices overlap, reflecting the heavily covered moment of that final epic season. "If this is the last dance, you might as well have it on your own dance floor," one announcer says. And so, it is at this Last Dance. For Jordan, who played on his own terms, predictably tells his story on his own terms, pushing off on the voices of others and privileging his own truth.

The undeniable editorial control of the NBA legend is perhaps the greatest tension of the ten-part docuseries and, along with it, a question of whether the series can claim to be about the Bulls and that final 1997–98 season or simply a Michael Jordan production in disguise. While director Jason Hehir acknowledges that Jordan had editorial control, he maintains the hoops legend never demanded anything removed from interviews or footage. Still, the range of easily checked inaccuracies and half-truths uttered by Jordan over the series can leave many a historian or journalist cringing under the weight of the ten episodes.

This is made plain in the most controversial moments of the series that seemingly serve to debunk long-held myths about Jordan within the larger basketball ethos. This includes whether Jordan's baseball year was a cover for a gambling-related NBA suspension (both Jordan and the late league commissioner David Stern vehemently deny this), if his infamous "Republicans buy sneakers, too" comment should be taken at face value (Jordan insists it was a joke made in passing), and if that epic "flu game" was actually due to something else (not a hangover, it appears, but a case of a tainted pizza).

On a more somber note, murmurs of whether Michael Jordan's gambling addiction was to blame for his father's murder dominated headlines in 1993; his response (and those of others) in the series offers perhaps the most persuasive (and perhaps guilt-inducing) moments of all ten episodes. Here we are introduced to the levels of grief Jordan experienced in both losing his father and closest confidant, as well as the media backlash that resulted. Placed in context of his own struggles with fame and the exhaustion he seemed to exude at the time, the reasons behind his hiatus from the game (and brief stint in minor league baseball) become more clear.

There are also several moments easily proven untrue with cursory research; two stick out in particular. In The Last Dance, Jordan claims that he did not insist on the exclusion of Isiah Thomas for the Dream Team roster in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, a fact easily refuted in a 2011 audio clip where Jordan recounts telling a U.S. Olympic Committee member he would not play if Thomas made the roster. Second, Jordan blames Horace Grant for leaking intimate information about the franchise to Sam Smith as he researched and wrote The Jordan Rules, a now-infamous book chronicling the Bulls' 1990–91 season...