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

I was watching a game from that season recently and it took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize they ALL had shaved heads

Wish I could find the accurate Ron Harper clay figurine I made in fifth grade.

i also wish you could find that since i want to see it

like anatomically accurate or

It's not as if my classmates were like, "Wow, this is an exact 1:9 clay replica of Ron Harper" (we were in Pistons territory anyway), but there was some likeness past jersey specifics. A casual NBA follower could probably tell by the shoulders that it wasn't Hot Rod Williams or Brad Daugherty.

lol

“that’s the beauty of the game. 1.1 seconds to get off the last shot, everybody holding their breath. it’s kinda cute.”

lol so much in here. he’s right. it is silly, it is tense, it is beautiful. but if he’d hit it i doubt “cute” is the word he’d use. he didn’t hit it so he’s mocking us for caring so much.

hahaha oh man

“... and the Bulls began to rebuild.”

what a dagger

#gutpunch

what do we do now guys ;_;

hold up🎶

wait a minute🎶

In case you needed even more 1990s Bulls content, ESPN will be airing a cinematic production of Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals on Wednesdayhttps://t.co/ntEjvHT0kF

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) May 18, 2020

nice!

I just searched ESPN on demand for the Warriors-Cavs game and it turns out there is actually a World Cornhole Championship and it is pretty intense

thank you pandemic

If I'm not mistaken one of the competitors is legit holding a weighted cylinder in his non-throwing hand in lieu of a beer can

HISSNER/HENDERSON look unstoppable right now

ughhh i hate Cornhole

Reminds me of white frat dudes coming to Raider tailgates with their cornhole games & horseshoes & beer pong & it’s like gtfo with yr East Coast college tailgate you fuckin nerds we out here DRINKING & SITTING & SNACKING dont fuck shit up with your activities

lol

Thought cornhole was a Midwestern thing. The name of it at least. "Bags" if you're an uppity Atlantic seaboard frat guy.

this is an aside but i have few tailgating stories so i'll share this one--many years ago i attended an offseason friendly match featuring celtic fc vs. liverpool in connecticut. i went with my friend and his brother who were both hardcore celtic supporters and hardcore liverpool haters (as they also supported everton in the premier league). i had no emotional stakes in any of this, just wanted to have a nice time.

so we show up to the stadium and park next to these liverpool fans who have a beautiful setup, with grills and a bunch of meats and tasty-looking things. because we are dirtbags barely removed from college the only thing we have is an 18-pack of coors light. the disparity is obvious to anyone looking. the liverpool fans are very nice and ask us if we want any food, but we are obligated to reject them and sullenly drink coors light. i have no idea what we actually ate or even if we did eat. anyway, the evening progressed from there.

shoutout to deadbeats who are invited to tailgates and bring a 12 pack of crappy fuckin budweiser clamato beer, and then drink all your good beer

back on topic with an actual question i have

do you think any athlete has ever suffered champagne-blindness

also: i have a much deeper appreciation for MJ as a player despite going through my teens and 20s knowing and seeing him as the GOAT

seeing it close up & hearing him talk about hiw own playing really blew my idea of him wide open

his brain was just working non stop!

In 1998 I sent Michael Jordan an advanced copy of my “From the Soul of Man” album. Who knew “Days Like This” was his pre-game hype song though. 😆 #TheLastDance #RealR&B

— Kenny Lattimore (@kennylattimore) May 18, 2020

Michael Jordan’s daughter lol 😂 pic.twitter.com/geTP7Zial9

— @executiveschair (@executiveschair) May 19, 2020

Bet he's looking forward to the upcoming Kem album.

The NBA will do one as it will get hyped huge , but he f-in Kobe/Shaq Lakers don't deserve a documentary like this one. That team got so many wins by screwed up calls, people literally thought the NBA was having the refs throw down the game. The worst was the couple against the Kings, but there was wack calls in the Portland and Indiana series too.

That crap and the phantom fouls the Knicks got against the Pacers pretty much when I checked out following the NBA on any regular basis.

I will go to my grave thinking the league office was in the sack with those lakers teams and literally nothing can convince me otherwise salut

From the beginning it was clear that the series was leading up to The Shot but once we got there I was underwhelmed. Maybe because we’d seen so many other actual buzzer-beaters with more of a backstory to them - Jordan dishing to Paxson to win “the right way”, Kerr’s shot that established him as a postseason rock, Kukoc’s shot that Pippen thought should have been his, etc. Or maybe I’m just irritated at the likes of Costas mythologizing this shit in real time during the broadcast.

xp 4 ever. portland and sacto both got mugged by the refs.

nothing was more satisfying than the pistons wiping the floor with the lakers in 03, greatest feeling of comeuppance in my life probably? Danced all damn night

everyone picked the lakers and then they just got freakin housed lmao

pistons in 5 lol nobody saw it comin

gimme a 10 part doc on that series that is just sheed talking trash while smoking blunts plz and ty

detroit did it for the true heads that year. i think that team winning it all gave hope to so many franchises and infused a lot of life into the NBA. then the handchecking rules and steve nash n that brought it all the way back the next couple of seasons.

that's when I came back in the NBA fold, that Pistons squad. totally fell for "well-balanced team takes down superstar duo" narrative.

then Bron single-handedly took them down lol

yo lol

Horace Grant on Michael Jordan: ‘That’s a damn snitch right there’ https://t.co/0nyfj3GEZb

— Kurt Helin (@basketballtalk) May 19, 2020

Re: mythologizing The Shot in real time, I was not prepared for Leo in the locker room telling MJ how “poetic” it was.

Everybody talking about how Jordan treated Horace Grant and Scott Burrell... this Robert Parish anecdote didn't get any run (✍:Jackie MacMullan) https://t.co/RrcI1HqMvO pic.twitter.com/ej9E4XPboU

— Law Murray 🟠 (@LawMurrayTheNU) May 19, 2020

im all in no old jordan rumors now

During what van Gundy called "Camp Con" before Jordan made his comeback to the NBA he was playing a kind of summer league invite with a bunch of players and one of the players invited was Ron Artest. Jordan played his "let me see what this guy is made of" game with Ron Artest, who wasn't on his team, went Rotweiler on Jordan, jumped him and started whaling on him. Breaking a few of Jordan's ribs in the process. Jordan was competitive but Artest was gheto. That said, Artest didn't show the same fierceness when he was challenged by Ben Wallace. He wasn't really a tough guy, he was just against players smaller than him. I have a lot more respect for the "I dont' care how big you are, I'll fight you anyway" attitude, that Nate Robinson has. . . and Artest didn't have that kind of fearlessness, but he was a bad-ass and Artest was the guy who broke Jordan's ribs. I'm pretty sure that's been reported several times now, but it wasn't reported at the time.

Sam Smith, in ""The Jordan Rules"" wrote that Jordan had no respect for Cartwright, told his teammates to keep the ball away from Cartwright in crucial late-game situations (even if coach Doug Collins called a play involving Cartwright), and bellittled the veteran publicly. Cartwright confronted Jordan:

Excerpt: He didn't do or say anything to anybody until late that season, when he told Jordan he needed to talk to him.

There was little small talk exchanged. "I don't like the things I've heard you saying about me," Cartwright told Jordan.

Jordan stared at him.

"If I ever hear again that you're telling guys not to pass me the ball," Cartwright continued, "you will never play basketball again."

That was it. But as Cartwright began to move better after surgery following the 1989-90 season, Jordan began to accept him more.

wtf i completely forgot that parish played for the bulls that year.

one year before paul pearce came in for the celtics. those two eras are so much closer together than i remember them being.

its like rap music from those two eras too

speaking of Artest, if you haevn't seen this yet it's great

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GDYOu5jPE4

MJ:"the game of basketball"::LeBron:"things of that nature"

The NBA will do one as it will get hyped huge , but he f-in Kobe/Shaq Lakers don't deserve a documentary like this one. That team got so many wins by screwed up calls, people literally thought the NBA was having the refs throw down the game. The worst was the couple against the Kings, but there was wack calls in the Portland and Indiana series too.

my lingering memories of Kobe Bryant are him **always** getting the call in the last 2 minutes of 4th quarter games

i'm pretty sure the kobe/shaq lakers do not have anything close to the universal appeal of michael jordan.

need at least one ep on the tell me how my ass taste video

Think we’re good on Kobe content until about, say... 2070

yeah i would actually be pretty into a couple of hours of deep dive into the kobe-shaq feud years