Is anyone else disappointed in “The Last Dance”?
I couldn’t have been more excited for The Last Dance. In the day and age of social media where we know practically everything about everyone, the thought of a whole year’s worth of ‘behind the scenes, never before seen’ footage from 1998 captivated me. What was Jordan like in the quiet moments? How did he treat teammates? In the build-up to the documentary’s release, the media discussed this footage as if it was the Eighth Wonder of the World - a real look at Jordan that he never wanted to come to light.
At the end of the day, I’m pretty disappointed with the result. During a global pandemic, it feels people are more grateful than ever to have sports in their lives. There’s been a ton of praise and excitement for the documentary. Hearing all the praise, I’ve tried to convince myself that I’m being too harsh and reaching a judgment too soon. One of my friends put it best - “Sounds like you had high expectations. Always dangerous.”
Hits the nail on the head. For many of those who loved it, they hadn’t seen other Jordan documentaries or been hearing about it for a long time before its release. The curse of high expectations can be debilitating - once they announced Michael Jordan’s people were two of the executive producers, it should have been clear the result might not be an exposé.
What could have made this truly outstanding?
First of all, instead of maximizing bringing light to that footage and what it tells about Jordan, the documentary creators made a strategic decision to make this the ‘definitive’ documentary about Jordan as opposed to the definitive look at their 1997-98 season. The Last Dance is misleading – this is much more about Jordan and his entire career than that season in particular. The shifts in time try to place an emphasis on 1997-98, but it’s the Jordan story with the 97-98 footage as a plot device rather than the 97-98 season with the Jordan story in the background.
Even if they were going with the Jordan story, some decisions were inexplicable. Why such a focus on Scottie Pippen and the migraine game while Jordan was playing baseball? Why completely ignore the fact that Jordan did come back with the Wizards? And then became one of the least successful NBA owners? This was a strategic choice to shape the Jordan narrative for decades to come - highlighting his strengths and storybook ‘ending’ for the younger generation and casual viewers that didn’t see Jordan play.
Look - maybe the hidden footage wasn’t as fantastic as the directors hoped. But, I doubt that as many of my favorite moments across the eight hours have been from that footage: the trash talk from practice footage, the quiet moment in his hotel room, Jordan with his security guards. I could have watched hours of seeing what he was actually like – instead, we’ve had what feels like 20 minutes of raw footage across the ten hours as they go through the whole life of Jordan and the entire Bulls dynasty.
Even if we give the directors the benefit of the doubt that they did the best with the content they had access to, they could have gone a lot further towards showing us how Jordan thinks. Again, some of the best moments in the doc have been Jordan’s reactions to clips from others, from Isiah to Gary Payton to Reinsdorf. There’s so much more I want to know about how he thinks:
Reacting to Terry Francona - How good did Jordan think he was at baseball? How good did he think he could get?
Reacting to Horace Grant - Did Jordan feel he was beaten in 1995? How does he view that series?
Reacting to someone talking about his relationship with his father - we kept seeing how important his father was to him. How about Jordan as a father? Did Jordan becoming a father in 1988 change things? His boys were 8 and 10 during the 1997-98 season – how did they feel watching this?
Jordan may never have sanctioned exploring his attitudes on such a deep level. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter – a public starved for sports viewed the documentary through pandemic goggles. Jordan didn’t miss in many big moments of his career – but this documentary missed in its aim to be truly remarkable. Or maybe I just need more realistic expectations.