ESPN’s 10-part docuseries about the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls debuted on Sunday night. The first chapter of The Last Dance focused on the first month that Bulls team was together, along with a whole lot of backstory into Michael Jordan.

This edition of the series also gave the backstory behind how the phrase “the last dance” was forever tied to this Bulls squad. Two players on that squad, Steve Kerr and Bill Wennington, explained to ESPN that it stemmed from a document that head coach Phil Jackson handed out during the first team meeting of the year.

“Phil always looked for a theme for every season, and given that it was the last year we were gonna be together — management had already made that decision — in typical Phil fashion, he had a name for it,” Kerr said.

“We’d arrived at the practice facility, it’s our first official meeting as a team,” Wennington said. “Get the team handbook, laminated on the front page, The Last Dance.”

Previously, it had already been announced that Jackson would not return at the conclusion of the 1997-98 campaign, and the Bulls front office had already made it clear that they did not think this version of the franchise had a particularly long shelf life. Of course, Jordan would go on to retire at the end of the season, while the team lost a host of players, like Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman.

“I talked to the players about particularly how important it wad for us to really be together in this last run that we were going to have,” Jackson said. “So I called it The Last Dance.”

There was plenty of tension that existed between the Bulls’ locker room and its front office, something that is evident throughout the first episode. But fortunately for everyone, it ended up turning into a last dance to remember.

The second episode of ESPN’s tremendous The Last Dance documentary following the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls — and diving heavily into the backstory of its major players — puts Scottie Pippen into central focus. One of the major points is that Pippen, by the 97-98 season, was arguably the most underpaid athlete at the time.

Entering the final year of a 7-year, $18 million contract, Pippen was the 122nd highest paid player in the NBA and sixth highest paid member of the Bulls, despite being the clear second best player to Jordan on the team and a top 5 or 10 player in the NBA — with some willing to argue he was the second best player in the league to Jordan. Owner Jerry Reinsdorf refused to discuss any renegotiations with any player under contract, so Pippen simply had to play out his last year — with the potential of being traded.

At the end of the 96-97 title run, Pippen suffered a ruptured tendon in his ankle that would require surgery, but rather than have that surgery in June so he’d be able to return for the start of the next season, Scottie saw an opportunity to stick it to the Bulls front office a bit by postponing surgery and enjoying his summer instead of rehabbing.

“I had a ruptured tendon in my ankle, and I decided to have surgery late because I was like, you know what, I’m not gonna f*ck my summer up trying to rehab for a season,” Pippen said in The Last Dance. “They’re not going to look forward to having me, so I’m going to enjoy my summer and use the season to prepare.”

It’s an incredible quote and also, after five championships, it’s kind of understanding why Pippen would decide to not ruin his offseason with rehab given his contract situation. Unsurprisingly, Michael Jordan is less understanding of the choice and still isn’t pleased with Pippen’s decision to delay surgery until after the summer.

“Scottie was wrong in that scenario,” Jordan said. “He could’ve gotten his surgery as soon as the season was over and been ready for the season. What Scottie was trying to do was force management to change his contract, and Jerry wasn’t going to do that. So now I gotta start the season knowing Scottie wasn’t going to be around, but we have to find a way to win.”

In today’s era of players being more assertive about their health and timetables for returning from injury, Pippen’s decision might not be quite as controversial, but at this time — and to do it on a team with someone like Jordan who loathed missing games and not playing — it’s pretty incredible for Scottie to make that choice.

If The Last Dance does one thing, it is showing just how incredible it is that the 97-98 Bulls managed to win a title despite so much dysfunction going on. The star players and coach hated Jerry Krause, with Jordan and Pippen regularly yelling at him and making vicious jokes about him in front of the entire team. There was tension between the two superstars on the team due to Pippen’s choice to delay surgery. There were trade rumors involving Pippen that pushed him to make a trade request, and the documentary hasn’t even gotten to Dennis Rodman yet, who regularly would go missing.

View Entire Post ›

Perhaps the best part of The Last Dance, ESPN’s 10-part docuseries about the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, is the sheer number of incredible stories that get told by guys like Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson, Scottie Pippen, and the rest of the squad. One such story got told on Sunday evening during the first chapter of the story, and it involved Jordan making the jump from the University of North Carolina to the NBA.

Jordan stressed that legendary Tar Heels coach Dean Smith ran a “clean program,” which was not necessarily the case in Chicago, a team for which “drugs were prevalent” and the roster was composed of “a lot of partiers.” The camera then cut to Jordan in his living room being interviewed for the series, where he was asked about an old article in which the squad was referred to as “the Bulls traveling cocaine circus.”

After hearing this, Jordan tipped his head back and let out a hearty laugh, and while he did not explicitly say that was accurate, he laid out why that wasn’t necessarily far from the truth.

Look, guys were doing things that I didn’t see. I had one event, preseason, I think we were in Peoria. It was in the hotel, so I’m trying to find my teammates. I started knocking on doors. I get to this one door, and I knock on the door and I can hear someone says, “Shh shh shh, someone’s outside.” And then you hear this deep voice say, “Who is it?” I say, “MJ.” And then they all say, “Aw f*ck, he’s just a rookie, don’t worry about it.” So they open up the door, I walk in and practically the whole team was in there. And it was like, things I’ve never seen in my life as a young kid. You got your lines over here, your weed smokers over here, you’ve got your women over here. So, the first thing I said, “Look, man, I’m out.” Cause all I can about think is, if they come and raid this place right about now, I am just as guilty as everyone else that’s in this room. And from that point on, I was more or less on my
own.

Here’s the video of Jordan telling the story.

The entire first episode is fantastic, which is not unexpected, considering it is a tell-all series into one of the most captivating teams in the history of American sports. But it is probably fair to say that The Last Dance would still be outstanding if it was just 10 hours of Michael Jordan telling stories about Bulls things that made him laugh extremely hard. This one highlights an interesting part of Jordan’s backstory — the dude was so hyper-focused on basketball and had such a sheltered upbringing that he was mortified of getting arrested at a party in the 1980s — but above everything else, this was the single-funniest story of the episode.

View Entire Post ›

View Entire Post ›

View Entire Post ›

Which ones are your parents?

View Entire Post ›

I too just want to be swaddled and fed and left alone.

View Entire Post ›

This quiz is a piece of cake.

View Entire Post ›