The Last Dance is a 2020 American sportsdocumentary miniseries co-produced by ESPN Films and Netflix. Directed by Jason Hehir, the series revolves around the career of Michael Jordan, with particular focus on his last season with the Chicago Bulls. The series features exclusive footage from a film crew that had an all-access pass to the Bulls, as well as interviews of many NBA personalities including Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Steve Kerr, and Phil Jackson. The series 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 US airings; beginning on May 23, two episodes were aired back-to-back on ESPN's corporate partner ABC. It received critical acclaim, with praise for its directing and editing. The series became available on Netflix on July 19, 2020.
Synopsis
The docu-series 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, ordered by air time.
Episodes
Production and release
The series features both 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, 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 first official 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 published the final trailer on March 31, 2020 and expedited the premiere to April 19, 2020, releasing the following statement: 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. The fifth episode is dedicated to Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash on January 26, 2020.
Reception
Critical response
On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 96% based on 53 reviews, with an average rating of 8.72/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "A compelling and comprehensive portrait of one of basketball's great teams, The Last Dances 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." Chicago Sun-Timess Richard Roeper gave the film 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 sportssoap 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 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.
Response from the basketball community
While the series drew positive reactions from many current NBA players, several players featured in the documentary were critical of how they were portrayed. Scottie Pippen was reportedly "wounded and disappointed" by his characterization, though he did not make any public remarks during the documentary's airing. Pippen later denied any rift between himself and Jordan over the documentary. Horace Grant expressed a belief that the documentary was edited to favor Jordan, remarking that the series was "entertaining, but we know that about 90% of it 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. Craig Hodges, who was not interviewed for the documentary, was "bothered" by Jordan's comments about the team's use of cocaine during the 1980s, remarking, "I was thinking about the brothers who with you who have to explain to their families".
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 6.709 million viewers. Variety dubbed the show's performance a "consolation prize" for ESPN given the network's struggle to find live sports.
