TV Review - The Last Dance (2020)

From 1997 to 1998, a camera crew was given all-access to the Chicago Bulls, the NBA team that had won five championships, thanks to the work from basketball star and who most people agreed was the best NBA player alive, Michael Jordan. It was announced that the 1997-98 season would be the final season for head coach, Phil Jackson, with the Bulls. Jackson nicknamed that season, "The Last Dance." That season would also be the final year that Jordan would play with the Bulls as well. As a result, the camera crew was sent and it captured hundreds of hours of footage, both on the court and off, with some candid stuff inside the locker room. However, an agreement was made that this footage could only be used with Jordan's permission and for nearly 20 years, Jordan did not give his permission. This series though never really explains or explores why.

It's reminiscent of the Aretha Franklin documentary Amazing Grace (2019), which was originally filmed back in 1972, but didn't premiere in theaters until 2018. The footage of Franklin sat for far longer. The reasons were mainly due to technical difficulties, but, even after those difficulties were overcome, Franklin didn't give her permission. It was only after her death that the footage was finally shown to the public. Jordan didn't have to die to get the footage of him out, but it was a bit of a long road. In an article on ESPN.com by Ramona Shelburne, it does explain that producers at the time and the few years after 1998 thought that a single documentary film wouldn't be enough to tell the story of the 1997-98 season. After the success of Ezra Edelman's O.J.: Made in America (2016), people who still remembered that the footage from that season existed thought it could be turned into a series on the same level as Edelman's work. The series was originally supposed to be released in June, but it got bumped up to April. Given that the Covid-19 pandemic had shut down all live sports that was airing on ESPN at the time, the channel needed content.

I'm not an expert in ESPN's 30 for 30 series, which has become a bit of the standard when it comes to sports documentaries, but I would argue that this series doesn't quite rise to the level of O.J.: Made in America. For people who are hardcore fans of the NBA or sports in general, you will certainly find a lot to be compelling here. It's definitely a series for basketball lovers. For people like me who aren't fans of basketball or sports in general, there isn't that much more to be had. Unlike O.J.: Made in America or Netflix's Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez (2020), this series isn't built around some huge crime.

However, a great sports documentary or docu-series doesn't need to be built around some huge crime. The Oscar-winning Undefeated (2011) was great and didn't have a huge crime at its center. That documentary was about a high school football team. A more comparable film would probably be Hoop Dreams (1994), which was also about basketball. It wasn't about the Bulls, but it was set in Chicago. It wasn't just about the game. It was also about the African-American experience, issues of race, class and education. This series, directed by Jason Hehir who has done several projects for ESPN Films, isn't really about anything beyond the game. Hehir's series doesn't take on racial issues, class issues, educational or broader cultural issues. Hehir's series is really about the Chicago Bulls and how Jordan played the game. That's it. If you want more than that, which I personally do, it's not here.

One could argue that Hehir's series is about the relationships between the players, with the coaches and with management or what they call "front office." However, most of those relationships are the ones that occur on the court and strictly on the court or in preparation to go on the court, which is fine. Jordan is regarded as the greatest player, so watching an analysis of what drives him or motivates him would be important to anyone strictly or myopically focused on the game. Yet, the players don't exist in vacuums. They have lives outside the game and off the court. Unfortunately, Hehir's series doesn't really delve into that side. There is some lip service or superficial attention paid to that side, but it's not enough. For example, when Jordan mentioned in Episode 6 or 7 that he had kids, I was shocked. It's not that I didn't think he had children at all, but this series mostly avoids Jordan's personal life.

I'm not arguing for tabloid journalism or sensationalism. This is a whole series on Michael Jordan and despite him being very competitive and extremely hard-working, I feel like I learned very little about Jordan. I'm also not arguing for the filmmakers to invade his privacy, but there still feels as though there's some distance between the filmmaker and the subject. This is opposed to something like Netflix's Cheer (2020), which I felt wasn't perfect but struck a better balance between the personal lives and the so-called professional lives of the athletes in question. This series very much keeps with a chant from the Bulls, "What time is it? Game time!"

Episode 2 is probably the best episode because that episode does delve a little deeply into Scottie Pippen and his contract, which many people pointed out only made him the 122nd highest-paid player in the NBA. Despite Pippen's career and contribution to the Bulls, he seemingly wasn't paid what he was worth. The episode's exploration of that, along with a little background on Jordan's parents and childhood, as well as Pippen's childhood, was a good first step for Hehir's series. That kind of delving though wasn't really sustained for the rest of the series. It became more about detailing various games that were played both in the 1997-98 season and in seasons going back over Jordan's 13-year career. It includes a lot of montages of Jordan going to the hoop with layups, dunks and three-pointers. If you just want to see Jordan making shots over and over and really nothing else, this is the series for you.

Rated TV-14.

Running Time: 1 hr. / 10 eps.

Available on ESPN, coming to Netflix on July 19.