The Last Dance is a 2020 American sports television documentary miniseries co-produced by ESPN Films and Netflix. Directed by Jason Hehir, the series revolves around Michael Jordan's career, with particular focus on the 1997–98 season, his final season with the Chicago Bulls. The series features exclusive footage from a film crew with an all-access pass to the Bulls, and interviews of many NBA personalities, including Jordan's teammates (Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Steve Kerr) and then-Bulls head coach Phil Jackson.
The Last Dance aired on ESPN from April 19 to May 17, 2020, in the United States, while its episodes were released on Netflix internationally the day after their American airings; beginning on May 23, two episodes were aired back-to-back on ESPN's corporate partner ABC. ESPN2 aired an alternate version of the series intended for family viewing, which removed most of the profanity heard in the episodes. The series became available on Netflix on July 19, 2020.
The series was met with critical acclaim, with praise for its directing and editing, and also for the timing of the release - during the initial weeks of quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic when viewers were struggling to find entertainment. The Last Dance won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series at the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards.
However, The Last Dance received heavy criticism from many of Jordan’s former Bulls teammates, who disputed the series's accuracy and focus on Jordan. Much of the hostility stemmed from the expectation that the documentary would center exclusively on the 1997–98 Bulls season rather than be an account of Jordan's life and career. The series's creators were also accused of portraying multiple key players of that era in an unfairly negative fashion while being excessively deferential to Jordan.
Contents
Synopsis
The docuseries gives an account of Michael Jordan's career and the Chicago Bulls, using never-before aired footage from the 1997–98 Bulls season, his final season with the team.
Interviews
This is the list of the 90 persons interviewed for the documentary, listed by air time.
Production and release
The Last Dance features interviews and never-released footage from the 1997–98 Chicago Bulls season. Over 500 hours of all-access footage was filmed and used to create the 10-part documentary series. According to Adam Silver (now NBA Commissioner, but then the head of NBA Entertainment), Jordan allowed the filming with the agreement that the footage would only be used with his direct permission. After many years, and many refusals from Jordan, he agreed in 2016 to a documentary proposal from Mike Tollin.
ESPN and Netflix announced their joint production of the 10-part documentary series in May 2018, with the official teaser trailer being released on December 25, 2018. The release date was pushed back to June 2020 after another trailer was released in December 2019. However, because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, ESPN released the final trailer on March 31, 2020 and moved the premiere to April 19, 2020, releasing the following statement:
As society navigates this time without live sports, viewers are still looking to the sports world to escape and enjoy a collective experience. We've heard the calls from fans asking us to move up the release date for this series, and we’re happy to announce that we’ve been able to accelerate the production schedule to do just that. This project celebrates one of the greatest players and dynasties ever, and we hope it can serve as a unifying entertainment experience to fill the role that sports often play in our lives, telling a story that will captivate everyone, not just sports fans.
The series was released weekly from April 19, 2020 to May 17, 2020, with two episodes airing each Sunday. Outside of the United States, the episodes were released on Netflix the day after their ESPN airing. ESPN2 aired a censored version of the documentary alongside the ESPN broadcast. The censored version was also aired on ABC.
According to Hehir, Jordan refused to film interviews in his home to maintain privacy. The interviews were filmed in three houses, one rented by the production and two others which were homes of friends of the production. The fifth episode is dedicated to Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash on January 26, 2020. Bryant's interview was featured in the episode's opening.
Reception
Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 97% based on 62 reviews, with an average rating of 8.85/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "A compelling and comprehensive portrait of one of basketball's great teams, The Last Dance's blend of archival footage and candid interviews confirms there's nobody quite like Mike or the team he led to victory." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the series a score of 91 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
Writing for Consequence of Sound, Robert Daniels gave The Last Dance a perfect score, calling the series "beautifully composed and edited together" and a "pulsating celebration of greatness." Similarly, Alex Pattle of The Independent praised director Jason Hehir, writing that "Hehir's fear of being formulaic fosters a compelling freshness, and his ability to subtly segue between tones ensures Jordan's auras of magnetism and intensity are highlighted at the appropriate moments", while Brian Lowry of CNN gave the series five stars out of five, saying that "it's a very, very deep dive, but for fans who will eat this stuff up, it hits all the right notes."
The Chicago Sun-Times's Richard Roeper gave the series three and a half stars out of four, writing that "while some might question whether even one of the great team sports dynasties of all time merits such a lengthy treatment, if anything each episode left me wanting more. Not only were the Bulls a team for the ages, they also gave us a sports soap opera for the ages." Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter gave the series a positive review, writing that "it's a tremendously engaging, ridiculously fun assemblage of spectacular basketball footage and reasonably introspective interviews with almost everybody you'd hope to hear from on the subject." Writing for The New York Times, Wesley Morris wrote that "Hehir has this trick where any time someone says something debatable or controversial or simply worthy of running by [Michael] Jordan, he hands him an iPad and makes him watch what was said. And every time Hehir does it, Jordan turns the reaction into gold. He's an incredulous Zeus in these moments, lightning bolts falling from his toga as he laughs, zapping lesser gods."
Conversely, filmmaker Ken Burns criticized Michael Jordan's involvement in the production of the series, saying that "if you are there influencing the very fact of it getting made, it means that certain aspects that you don't necessarily want in aren't going to be in [...] and that's not the way you do good journalism." Specifically, Burns pointed to Jordan's production company, Jump 23, being listed as a partner in the series. Hehir would respond to such speculations stating "I ran into zero stop signs in the editorial process. Michael was involved, but in a distant satellite-level while making it. He never came close to the editing room and only received cuts as they were about to go on air. I think Michael is above the fray when it comes to what he wants in and out.”
Criticism by former teammates
The Last Dance drew positive reactions from active NBA players, impressed by Jordan's accomplishments, and thankful for the series providing much-needed entertainment in the initial quarantine period of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the other Chicago Bulls players on the Last Dance team who personally experienced all of the events that took place in the docu-series publicly disagreed with much of the docu-series' version of events, and placed the blame on Jordan for molding questionable narratives.
Scottie Pippen was reportedly "wounded and disappointed" by his portrayal in the series, although he did not make any public remarks during the documentary's airing. Pippen later denied any rift between himself and Jordan over the documentary; however, he told Jordan he was not pleased with the docuseries and considered it to be "about Michael trying to uplift himself”.
Pippen would go on to aggressively criticize Jordan in the following years. In 2021, he wrote an autobiography, Unguarded, which gives his own perspective on the Bulls' dynasty. In the book, he is highly critical of Jordan, calling him selfish, hypocritical and insensitive. In other interviews, Pippen also stated that he thought Kobe Bryant and LeBron James were greater basketball players than Jordan, and said that when Jordan first played for the Bulls, he was a “horrible” player and had poor shot selection.
Horace Grant said that The Last Dance was edited to favor Jordan, remarking that the series was "entertaining, but we know [...] that about 90% of it [was] BS in terms of the realness of it"; he also denied Jordan's accusation that Grant was the source for The Jordan Rules and agreed that Pippen was portrayed unfairly.
Grant also explained on Bill Cartwright's podcast that he initially planned to decline the interview offer, as he was not a member of the Last Dance team. However, after much persistence by the production crew, Grant finally "reluctantly" conceded to interview because he wanted to reminisce about his days as an NBA star. He then said he took an outspoken stance about his disdain for the documentary because he wanted to defend his character and did not agree with the veracity of Jordan's version of events. Grant then doubled down on Jordan by expressing his frustrations about Jordan and the docu-series in a lengthy phone call with Shannon Sharpe.
US ratings
For the 2019–20 television season, the show tied for fifth among adults 18–49 in the Nielsen ratings with This Is Us, averaging a 2.9 rating and 15 share. It also placed 55th in total viewership, averaging 6.71 million viewers. Variety dubbed the show's performance a "consolation prize" for ESPN given the network's struggle to find live sports. The series also became ESPN's most-watched documentary.
The Last Dance : U.S. viewers per episode (millions)
