The Last Dance: In Praise of One Lone Gold Hoop Earring

not gonna lie, i am going to watch this

they just showed rookie mike in '84 wearing what looked like koss portapros. nice!

this is really really good

incredible detail that jordan and danny ainge played golf between games 1 and 2 in the '86 playoffs

playing 18 holes of golf is so physically strenuous, it's insane that they did that

tbh found these first two episodes pretty functional but seeing this level of footage is always wonderful. i didn't realize michael's shot vs georgetown was in the superdome

yeah this was really good

i agree that it's functional but they have so much good stuff to work with that i have no problem with functional

I haven’t watched this yet but I don’t really buy this narrative that the bulls would have kept going if it wasn’t for that evil Jerry Krause

it's gonna be colored by mj's perspective, otherwise he never would've agreed to this thing. but yeah, the krause stuff has always struck me as a bit mean-spirited, and now he can't defend himself.

For one thing, everyone knew a lockout was coming

Pippen reaming Krause out on the bus was very uhhhhh
Bill Wennington is a viking.

Didn’t know about Pip’s considerable family obligations, that explains a lot about him grabbing the first major payday offered.
There is no fucking way Reinsdorf told him he should take a shorter contract.

Krause seemed like a real shithead but Jordan antagonized him in ways that were really counterproductive. Picking Kukoc was maybe the best thing Krause did but because Jerry did it Jordan and Pippen resolved to treat him like shit.

yeah, i am very much looking forward to seeing what the Kukoc episode looks like

Other highlights: Jordan being an absolute dick to Harper, Oak literally slapping Pippen around

Anyways yeah: this is very good and I would've binge watched it all in one sitting if it were available

need to find a way to watch this

pretty convenient for Reinsdorf to have Krause--who can no longer defend himself--as a scapegoat for being a stingy shlub of an owner

it seems like there is two strains to the krause stuff

-- the personal disdain for him that def seemed OTT and petty, tho scottie is perhaps in a different category
-- krause pushing phil out so he could install tim floyd, which put a hard end on the run. nobody seems to have a different narrative other than that it was krause's initiative, tho maybe krause would be able to defend himself. reinsdorf does manage to elide any questions such as "why did you let this man push phil jackson and michael jordan out?"

If the 97-98 Bulls were happening today there would be a large segment of NBA Twitter saying Krause was right to want to blow it up and trade Pippen for future assets and let Jordan walk for cap space.

— Sean Highkin (@highkin) April 20, 2020

i do think this is true and i bet there were even ppl at the time defending it on these grounds. it's not wrong to say that if the phil/MJ/pippen core had continued after they beat the jazz the second time they had max... 2 more years? that would have been pushing into beyond unprecedented territory basically. the end was definitely near one way or another and i agree in hindsight it's easy for there to be more uproar when the fatigue has long since dissipated

I don't know what 1st soured MJ on Krause. Drafting Sellers over some UNC guy he preferred? Anyway, whatever valid beef(s) he did have w Krause was intertwined with idiotic jock vs fat dork bullshit.

you dont break up a championship team nothin more to say about that

like even that drink mavs team that seemed pretty flukey u still dont break it up you play for a second fluke its too hard to climb that mountain again

dirk

even if its def gonna leave u with an over paid old team eventually u still do it for a shot at another ring thats what its all about baby

gotta properly defend the title

i mean i wldve let jordan do whatever he wanted for as long as he wanted fuck it hes michael jordan he earned it and people are gonna show up to watch him regardless

the kobe effect

iirc at the time the headline was just "jordan retiring" like the behind the scenes stuff wasnt widely known

even if its def gonna leave u with an over paid old team eventually u still do it for a shot at another ring thats what its all about baby

otm. It's like ppl have placed more value on "building a championship team" than like actually having a championship team and maintaining it.

hey everyone checkout my new Ferrari isn't it great.
"eh it's gonna break down in a couple years"
hey everyone I've chopped up my Ferrari and sold it for parts so I can hopefully have a chance to put together a brand new Ferrari in a couple years when that old Ferrari would've broken down

cut to 25 years later...

this was great to watch but im so sick of mike vs lebron debates and this has basically made the internet and sports talk more insufferable than normal.

Got to the point where my stance was MJ is my guy but LeBron is undeniably great and I'm not going to say it's wrong to argue he's as good as MJ if not better. But then heard LeBron himself thinks he's now surpassed MJ's legacy and so I'm back to "fuck that dude, MJ wouldn't have lost to Dirk fucking Nowitzki with Wade & Bosh or quit on his team mid-game in a conf finals".

His relationship with general manager Jerry Krause soured because Krause and Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf limited his playing time to seven minutes per half when he finally returned, as not to endanger the franchise’s most valuable asset.

Ok now I remember this always being cited as the start of the MJ/Krause friction. Seems like an odd thing to be THAT upset with someone over. The nerve of this guy, trying to protect the team's superstar and not have him play big minutes in a meaningless season coming back from a major injury! Totally understandable for MJ to then loathe him for eternity amirite.

My earliest MJ memories are of him coming back and having that minutes restriction and it was SO FRUSTRATING as a lil dude who just wanted to see this spectacular basketball man do stuff.

the minutes-restriction thing is another thing that would get totally different coverage these days. imagine explaining "the process" to 22-year-old MJ lol

michael jordan became the dominant athlete of all time because his dad made fun of him for not knowing a lot about tools

— john wilmes (@johnwilmeswords) April 20, 2020

granny, they show the specific "7 minute per half" game that got the bulls into the playoffs where jordan gets sat on the last shot and michael is STILL pissed about it

i found that oakley slapping pippen around sequence, trying to imagine reddick trying this shit on zion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSNno0nBxMI

rookie or not, no one would have slapped around Wilt

lol there is a slight size difference between jj and zion xp

charles oakley would def slap the shit out of zion in the present day if he felt like he needed to

oak was for real lol

https://nypost.com/2017/01/10/charles-oakleys-legendary-slap-of-charles-barkley-confirmed/

i can't make out who the color guy is in the clip at the bottom of that article but lol at him claiming oak was going for the ball as he did a full wrestling move on barkley

pals

Must see TV tonight — my friend THE #GOAT!!!! #TheLastDance — 9pm EDT on @espn. #jordan #michaeljordan pic.twitter.com/eat4IUtyi4

— Charles Oakley (@CharlesOakley34) April 20, 2020

They did end the minutes restriction as soon as the playoffs started, which is evidence they cared more about the draft pick than protecting MJ's health.

If the 97-98 Bulls were happening today there would be a large segment of NBA Twitter saying Krause was right to want to blow it up and trade Pippen for future assets and let Jordan walk for cap space.
— Sean Highkin (@highkin) April 20, 2020
i do think this is true and i bet there were even ppl at the time defending it on these grounds. it's not wrong to say that if the phil/MJ/pippen core had continued after they beat the jazz the second time they had max... 2 more years? that would have been pushing into beyond unprecedented territory basically. the end was definitely near one way or another and i agree in hindsight it's easy for there to be more uproar when the fatigue has long since dissipated

― J0rdan S., Monday, April 20, 2020 1:47 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

you dont break up a championship team nothin more to say about that

― lag∞n, Monday, April 20, 2020 2:59 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah agree with this. there would be some people defending krause (think about that in hindsight...) but I think history teaches us that it's really hard to climb that ladder from contender to champ, and if you're within sniffing distance you push your chips in.

this is really good btw and it's a legitimate crime against humanity that they're making me wait another week to watch 2 more episodes

this discussion is reminding me that the cavs wouldnt trade kevin love and the draft pick that became collin sexton for paul george lol

i think ur being kind of a butthole abt this tbh!!!!

lol i thought about his work mb a lil more than i should have just cause i liked the the future football thing so much and watched some of his other of his stuff until it was like this man is really trying to convince me that not that interesting things are very interesting by using a mysterious tone when he asks questions aka pod voice, also some strong prosumer gamer musings im really not comfortable with, i mean its fine dont get me wrong i dont hate it or anything

his show "pretty good" has some fun stuff. baron davis hitting the longest shot of all time for one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndmBCqds_gc

CW: POD VOICE

i did watch that oneit was relevant to my interests......the ceiling was obvs way to low at the gym they went to thoo

yeah haha, sometimes they use cockatil napkin math but it helps with telling the story

it was just driving me crazy the way they had to throw the ball cause the ceiling was so low

"A man dropped a deck of cards and the 5 cards visible were in sequential order. What an amazing feat of skill!"

Bill Wennington's basement slot machine

i want to dougie jones on it

Jon Bois' Breaking Madden series was some of the funniest sportswriting ever

I thought Pippin came off really well in the documentary, seemed like a good dude, amazing speaking voice

Rewatching old bulls games I realize I really underrated Wennington at the time. He fit in the offense so well and shot around 50% taking a ton of midrange jumpers.

That baseline midrange was automatic

Just watched his HOF speech. Funny the reaction it got at the time, which I didn't understand then even. I guess the general basketball watching public at that point had never heard the psycho competitor/motivational fuel stories.

Do we need a new thread for Rip City Revival?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRpRwJWB61M

That Drexler-led Blazer team was enormous fun to watch. Another one of those triumphs of team chemistry creating something bigger than its parts.

i loved that blazers era; iirc everybody did

Ya very fun team. Was Terry Porter as streaky in general as he was in 92 Finals? Sure didn't seem to lack confidence

oh man that is like the most nostalgic catnip thing for my long forgotten youth possible fuck

i leave it to you to start a thread next week

$100 million, damn Mike

this is to spite obama isn't it

xps to a couple weeks ago but that blazers doc wasn’t very good, just an hour long recap of a few playoff series and some soft lit interviews, nice thought but hard to do much on a whole era in 40 minutes other than say “hey, this happened”

400 pages into that Lazenby book. It is...thorough. Did notice one questionable mistruth: he says MJ directly told Gannt's ppl "republicans buy sneakers too" but it's been fairly well documented that it was an offhand remark to Sam Smith.

aw, i was still looking forward to rip city

i mean, it's not so bad you shouldn't watch it! it's just a 40 minute hour! but it's little more than a trip down memory lane

you shouldnt watch it i didnt watch it its that bad

friend just told me the director of the doc was a kid we grew up with, i wasnt tight with him or anything but i knew him he was nice pretty quiet

on netflix now btw just in case anybody missed it.

also: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-the-nba-has-changed-since-the-jordan-rules

Sam Smith: I got a call from the director, and he said, “Hey, could you sit down? We’re doing this.” Jordan has never said a word to me about “The Jordan Rules.” Never once, in thirty years. At the end of the interview, I said, “Hey, tell me something. Did you have to ask Michael permission to talk to me?” And the guy kind of stammered a little bit. And he said, “Well, we actually did ask him if it was O.K.” And I said, “Well, what’d he say?” He said, “I don’t give a fuck who you talk to.” The way I understood it is, he didn’t say whether they could or could not. They weren’t sure whether they should.

I thought the documentary was more “based on a true story.” I think there was a little bit of drama put into it. It was Michael’s story. It wasn’t a journalistic documentary, per se. And it shouldn’t be. He never told his story before. People never heard it from his standpoint, and that’s what it was.

Do you feel like you understand him better from it?

No.

I had extraordinary access that doesn’t exist anymore, in any form. You can develop relationships. Media guys still develop the relationships. But these men and women who do that now have to produce something, like, every two hours. I would make other calls. I would check on things. I would hang out with players. The Bulls practiced in a public health club. I joined it as a member. So when they would lift weights after practice, I would be next to them. I wouldn’t lift weights, but I would be sitting with them. Now everything is privacy. The locker room was just open.

For a 7 p.m. game, Jordan would come at, like, 3 p.m. or something, so I’d get there and just talk with him for three hours. Now you’ve got ten minutes with guys, if that. LeBron is celebrated for being one of the few in the whole league who comes out before the game and gives the media five minutes. Jordan gave everybody three hours.

After watching, I also feel like MJ is still a cipher. Maybe there's just no "there" there. "MJ" devoured "Mike Jordan".

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2020 season is nominated in the 2020 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2020 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 29, 2021

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

30 years ago today Bulls won 1st championship. I was 13 yrs old. Blows my mind that for a 13 yr old today the 1st 3 peat Bulls are as ancient as the Russell Celtics were to me.

Yeah.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezxd6NXZW0w

!!

Lol

I got that cologne for Xmas lol. Don't remember that commercial at all tho.

same. dont think i ever finished the bottle

GO INSIDE

that always makes me think of this Snickers ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojXMu6V7E5g

Muresan is fifty now which makes me feel crazy old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chbPp2tifWI

Great "and I took that personally" game. I can't find the details but Gerald Wilkins apparently told the media before series began that he would lock down MJ. "Tough night for the Jordan stopper" MJ said after the game.

1hr33min mark color commentator Jack Givens speaking on Wilkins waking the beast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7VFL9cXTk

thanks. whoa @ scottie pippen going full walter white?!

that video is well worth the watch btw; Luc seems like a really decent guy

plus an unedited half hour with Michael talking about Longley!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q27fAO1emHM

a rare nice story
https://www.nba.com/news/a-brother-his-family-and-michael-jordan-reflecting-on-9-11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE04vlw90_s

He’s amazingly charismatic and sharp, just a natural.