The Last Dance Lives Up to the Hype

The first thing to really think about while talking about The Last Dance documentary is about the time that it was released in. Since the NBA had been shut down since March 11th, fans were without anything new when it came to NBA basketball. The documentary came out just over a month after that which really helped fill the absence of basketball in the community. The need for something basketball-related was being refilled and it really rebirthed basketball for this time since we weren’t able to see anything fresh, just old games and highlights on tv and social media. The impact that this documentary had from just the time that it was released had made it a very important documentary for basketball fans. That’s only one of the reasons that this documentary is so good.

In addition to giving more basketball content to the community, it also shared one of the greatest basketball stories of all time to people who witnessed it to remember and for people who didn’t to be able to see it themselves. It mainly focused on the story of Michael Jordan on his last season with the Chicago Bulls. One of the best parts of the documentary was the focus on the other player’s lives like Dennis Rodman and Scottie Pippen. It would tell you about Dennis Rodman’s party life that he had outside of basketball and what he was doing as well as telling you how Scottie Pippen was feeling being one of the least paid on the Bulls team while being the second-best player behind Jordan. 

Another great part about the documentary is the numerous stories on Michael Jordan. There were stories from different people showing their point of views on what happened which added a lot of depth to the documentary. In my opinion the most interesting stories were the ones on how badly Michael craved winning. It would talk about how Michael Jordan would do anything and he would disown his teammates for messing up and he would “punish” them too. It made him out to be kind of a jerk but at the same time it just shows how crazy about winning he was. It was also nice to be able to see the gameplay from that time and unreleased footage so that we could really see how much of a good player Michael Jordan was. 

Between all the stories of Michael Jordan, his teammates, his rivals, and people who played against him or just watched him play, an amazing documentary was created that helped reinstall the appreciation of Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls team. This appreciation was slowly diminishing because overtime people would start to forget what he brought to the game and people started focusing on new players. This really helped bring back appreciation to Michael for the people who were fans of him when they were younger as well as bringing more appreciation to fans that never got to see him play.

Weedsport math teacher Jason Corbin had some things to say about the documentary that did a very good job of showing the feeling that the documentary helped bring back to people who were there to see Jordan’s legacy unfold. He started off by saying, “I found it interesting how competitive Jordan was in every aspect of his life. The guy “thirsted” for any type of competition and absolutely hated to lose. While I knew this about him, the documentary did a great job to show just how much these traits were driving factors for him.” He said that he loved the interviews and stories and how they were told from the perspective of Jordan himself and then others who were also there. He said, “I remember watching mostly all of the Playoff games that Jordan played in and thinking how lucky I was to be witnessing first-hand one of the best players ever.” He added how he was able to relive these moments from his childhood and he thought that was cool. The last and my personal favorite thing he said was, “I will admit that before watching it, I was starting to think that maybe Lebron James was as good as Jordan. How stupid of me! Jordan was the best ever!”

Michael Jordan has always been one of, if not my favorite, NBA players ever, and being able to almost get the feeling that people had when they were able to watch him play, had made me like him even more than I had before. It was also nice to be able to see the shift from the G.O.A.T. talks go back to Michael because people who didn’t get to see him and didn’t take the time to learn about him and what he did were able to see it for themselves. However, the document was not to try to make people think Michael Jordan was the greatest of all time, it was to help people realize that they need to appreciate all types of greatness and never forget about the greatness of the past. Whether or not you experienced it first-hand or are just figuring it out afterward, it is always important to appreciate what players bring to the game.