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Michael Jordan owns a number of the most famous shots in basketball history. Arguably none of them are more famous than the bucket he made in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, in which he pulled up from the free throw line and drew nothing but net to put the Chicago Bulls ahead of the Utah Jazz for good en route to their sixth championship and their second three-peat.

Episode 10 of The Last Dance spent a whole lot of time on both this shot and the sequence leading up to it. Jordan famously hit a shot to put Chicago within one, then stripped Karl Malone on the other end. On the way back down the floor, his teammates knew what was coming.

“Get the hell out the way,” Scottie Pippen said.

“He is not gonna pass this f*ckin’ ball,” Dennis Rodman remarked.

Jordan went 1-on-1 with Bryon Russell and, to quote the great Stuart Scott, was as cool as the other side of the pillow. From the moment that happened, there’s been a bit of controversy, as plenty of folks argue that Jordan should have been hit with a foul for pushing off against Scott. Jordan was asked about this and answered it in the most Jordan way possible.

“Everybody said I pushed off,” Jordan said. “Bullshit. The man, his energy was going that way, I didn’t have to push him that way.”

Bob Costas, who called the game for NBC, agreed with Jordan’s assessment, saying he didn’t push as much as Russell was already headed that way, anyway. This will not convince most people, because there’s no way Jordan would admit he got away with one, but as the saying goes, it’s not a foul if the ref doesn’t call it.

The 10th and final episode of The Last Dance went into a story that we all know and love, but never ceases to be captivating: Dennis Rodman missing practice the day after Game 3 of the 1998 NBA Finals to go to Michigan for a taping of WCW Nitro with Hulk Hogan.

As Carmen Electra explained, Rodman “took a detour” to go cut a promo on Karl Malone with Hulk Hogan and beat up Diamond Dallas Page with steel chairs.

Rodman’s explanation was also pretty perfect, as he said he was just doing “Dennis sh*t,” which encapsulates the entire essence of Rodman’s career. Maybe the best part of all of it was video from the next day’s practice when Rodman returned and Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan simply cracked jokes about it and Jordan broke the huddle by yelling “Rodzilllaaaaaa” — which is what Hogan referred to him as the night before.

Rodman would then escape out a back entrance with the media chasing him up the stairs out of the United Center to no avail. It’s a truly incredible series of events that is almost impossible to imagine happening now, a player taking a day off without permission to go do some wrasslin’ and then coming back and, aside from a fine, everyone just being like, “alright, cool.” That was how it was with Rodman and, as Jackson said to the media, the only people distracted were people outside of the Bulls facility.

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Michael Jordan’s performance in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals has long become infamous as “The Flu Game,” as he battled an illness that required an IV before the game and put forth a 38-point effort — including a clutch three late — in 44 minutes played (along with seven assists, five rebounds, and three steals).

There have long been theories about what really happened to cause Jordan to be in that bad of shape for the game, with some believing it was a hangover, but as he, his trainer Tim Grover, and friend George Koehler recalled in episode 9 of The Last Dance, it was food poisoning from a pizza that led to his illness. The story is something they’ve told before — as was evident by how well rehearsed it seems they all can tell it — as Grover and Koehler both recalled it seeming fishy that they had five delivery guys come to the room with the pizza.

Michael: “It’s like 10, 10:30 at night. I’m hungry.”
Tim: “No room service, Michael gets hungry. We’re calling all these different places. George and I are looking around. We find one pizza place open. One.”
George: “So he ordered pizza. And when the pizza came there was four or five guys outside the door.”
Tim: “Five guys delivering one pizza.”
George: “It’s very rare you get five delivery guys from the pizza place to bring you your pizza.”
Tim: “They’re all trying to look in, and everybody knew it was Michael. So I take the pizza, I pay them, and I put this pizza down and I say ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’”
Michael: “I ate the pizza. All by myself. Nobody else eats the pizza. I wake up about 2:30 throwing up left and right.”
Tim: “Three o’clock in the morning I get a call, ‘come to the room right now.’ He’s literally curled up in a ball shaking. He says, ‘man find a team doc, now.’”
Michael: “So it really wasn’t the flu game. It was food poisoning.”

There’s something incredibly funny about Jordan saying so forcefully that he ate the whole pizza and no one else. Also, why they made it clear this pizza was for Jordan, leading to that many guys coming to deliver it (and, potentially, the pizza being sabotaged) also makes little sense. Whatever the case, it led to one of the all-time great performances in NBA history, so in hindsight, that’s an important pizza — at least, if you believe that was indeed the story.

Episode 9 of The Last Dance begins with the 1998 Chicago Bulls’ quest to beat the Utah Jazz in the NBA Finals, but in order to provide some context to that series, things jump back to the previous year’s Finals, which pitted the two sides against one another. Chicago, of course, would go on to win that series in six games, marking championship number two in their second three-peat.

Michael Jordan had plenty of motivation in that series, primarily Karl Malone winning the league’s MVP Award for the 1996-97 campaign. But before that happened, the seeds for Jordan to go off in the series were planted back in 1995, while Jordan was still playing baseball.

Utah was in Chicago to take on the Bulls, and Jordan decided to pay a visit to Malone and John Stockton. While he was there, we learned, young Jazz forward Bryon Russell decided to get chirpy with Jordan.

“Pssh, OK, Bryon Russell?” Jordan recalled. “When I was playing baseball, Utah was in town to play the Bulls. They were practicing at the facility, I go over to say hi to John and Karl, and this kid Bryon Russell comes up to me and says, ‘Man why you quittin? Why you quittin? You know I could guard your ass, I couldn’t wait, you had to quit.’ I said, ‘Karl, you need to talk to this dude, man.’ ‘Nah, he’s just a young rookie.’ But from that point on he’s been on my list.”

Russell could have done a better job checking Jordan, as the Bulls star went for 32.3 points, seven assists, and six steals a game in the series. Jordan, it turns out, knew exactly how to react Russell.

“I knew how he played,” Jordan said. “He played on the front of his toes. Give him a head and shoulder fake and go one way, he can’t stop it.”

While Russell battled, Jordan just knew what to do and was able to execute to perfection.

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Friends has remained as popular today as it was when it began airing over 25 years ago, and it’s done so despite not exactly jibing with the politics of today. One complaint: Its all-white cast, which seemed far-fetched then and especially so now. Its cast would agree with that. Speaking to The Sunday Times (as caught by Entertainment Weekly), Lisa Kudrow pondered what a rebooted Friends would look like in 2020.

“It’d be completely different,” the erstwhile Phoebe Buffay said. “It would not be an all-white cast, for sure.”

Indeed, it wasn’t only the main sextet who were Caucasian; most, though not all, of the supporting characters and guest stars were, too. Modern thinkpieces on Friends, which celebrated its quarter-of-a-century anniversary last fall, criticize some of its politics, from the copious fat-shaming of young Monica to its whitewashed portrayal of Manhattan. Kudrow argued that it “should be looked at as a time capsule, not for what they did wrong.”

She also defended it a bit, pointing out it was ahead of the curve on many other social issues, including its positive portrayal of Ross Geller’s ex Carol (Jane Sibbett), who leaves him and marries another woman (played by Jessica Hecht).

“There was a guy whose wife discovered she was gay and pregnant, and they raised the child together?” Kudrow pointed out. “We had surrogacy, too. It was, at the time, progressive.”

Kudrow’s comments come a few months after David Schwimmer made similar comments to The Guardian, saying he was “well aware of the lack of diversity” on the show, and that he campaigned to have Ross date non-white women.

“One of the first girlfriends I had on the show was an Asian-American woman, and later I dated African American women,” Schwimmer said in January. “That was a very conscious push on my part.”

Friends is currently in limbo, its 236 episodes having left Netflix at the turn of last year, but it’s due for HBO Max when it launches on May 27. The reunion special, which was to have dropped on that date as well, had to be postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak, but surely they’ll have plenty to talk about whenever it finally happens.

(Via The Sunday Times and EW)

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