ESPN and Netflix have teamed up to put together a 10 part documentary on the amazing career of Michael Jordan. ‘The Last Dance’ features all 13 of Jordan’s historic seasons with the Chicago Bulls, but mainly focuses on his final season with the franchise. During the 1997-1998 NBA season, the bulls had a film crew at each one of their games, which they knew would most likely be the last we would see of the core group of players.
The first 2 episodes of ‘The Last Dance’ aired on April 19th, 2020, and gained an average of 6.1 million viewers on ESPN and ESPN2, and many more watching the following day with it’s release on Netflix. This highly anticipated series has smashed the viewership record for ESPN documentaries with a viewership of 6.3 million people on the first episode of the series. ‘You don’t know Bo’, a 2012 film about the legendary career of two sport athlete Bo Jackson held the previous ESPN documentary viewership record with 3.6 million viewers.
This 10 part series takes us through the career of Michael Jordan, starting off with his days at the university of North Carolina (UNC) and moving through his NBA career. Each episode focuses on a portion of his career leading up towards the 1997-1998 season. The episodes bounce back and forth between early parts of his NBA career and his final season with the Bulls, rather than following a set chronological path.
The Detroit Pistons were the toughest opponent jordan had to face in his career. The “bad boys Pistons” as they were commonly known, were the most physical team in the league. They had a very strong team in the late 1980’s and dominated Jordan’s Bulls for many years. The Pistons had defensive strategies which they called “Jordan rules”, where they would hit, trip and knock him down as soon as the attacked the basket.
Michael Jordan is considered by many to be the greatest player in NBA history, and therefore has many players idolizing and modelling their game after him. Many players were compared to Jordan over the years such as Vince Carter, Grant Hill and Harold Miner, but no other player was as close to Michael Jordan as Kobe Bryant.
Cover image: Flickr//mccarmona23
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