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

i haven't seen karl malone in years, that is exactly the way i wanted him to look and sound in 2020. what an amazing clip.
what a bad sumbitch

I don't think his wife was ever in it

her being his EX-wife prob had something to do with that

damn Karl is cool af

All in all, really glad I spent the 10 hours on this. I think two things above all else make it successful: 1) Lots of time given to Jordan's teammates and coach--Pippen most of all, but also Jackson and Rodman and Kerr. (I knew about Kerr's father from I book I read last year on the Warriors' rise). I don't think you could come away from this complaining "Hey, Jordan didn't win all those titles by himself." 2) It allows you to make up your own mind about Jordan. As I wrote in my first post, he never seemed guarded to me, for better or worse. All the things that drove him--the grudges, real and imagined, and the dismissiveness of other players that creeps in sometimes--they're all there. It mostly stayed clear of race after the Harvey Gantt/Nike flare-up--there's more in a single line from Do the Right Thing, when Spike Lee reminds John Turturro that Michael Jordan is his favourite player--than in all of The Last Dance, but that didn't feel like a glaring absence. I don't know if it's an absence that says more about Jordan or the filmmakers

I was wondering what other sports subjects might support something equally ambitious. The most obvious one to me would be Tiger Woods, a rise and (spectacular) fall and rise-again story like nothing else (with, at least for the first part of the story, a dramatic foil in Phil Mickelson). The key would be getting Tiger to let down his guard (and assuming there's actually a there there worth opening up on--hard to tell sometimes).

I don't know anything about football--the Brady/Belichick/Patriots dynasty?

It's almost impossible to sustain a modern-day baseball dynasty like the Bulls had, with the exception of the Joe Torre Yankees. But there's no figure compelling enough there to hold the center of the story the way Jordan does. (Sorry, Derek Jeter.) The Braves had an even longer dynasty, but coming away with exactly one championship rules them out, unless that becomes the story itself. I think you'd have to go back to the Robinson Dodgers or Stengel/Mantle Yankees for a subject that might be up to it.

The Federer/Nadal/Djokovic might be worth something equally lengthy, but I don't know how interesting those guys are off-court. Serena Williams is interesting enough, but her dominance might pose a problem dramatically.

i wouldn't mind seeing ten hours on Madden's years with the Raiders. I wonder how many of those guys are still alive.

tiger is m/l the only other one i think can compare. plenty of other teams/players that could use a 1-4 hour documentary but not ten hours worth.

the problem with golfers is they never really retire

The dramatic tension is generated by Darths Krause and Reinsdorf actively working against their own squad - I don’t think there is a comparable story, at least not with someone with MJ’s dominance and influence at the centre of it

Charley Finley's Oakland A's could totally justify ten hours

Plus the pristine never-seen film footage of that very year - it’s extraordinary

It is film, right?

xpost

I guess one with Tom Brady is already in the works and it's absolutely gonna suck

her being his EX-wife prob had something to do with that

yeah see somewhere in the 10 hours they could've mentioned that

Charley Finley's Oakland A's could totally justify ten hours

Read a really good book on them--their dynasty was short, but in many ways they are the most interesting potential baseball subject of the past 50 years (with the parallel story of free agency).

The Braves had an even longer dynasty, but coming away with exactly one championship rules them out, unless that becomes the story itself.

Dumb idea. Greg Maddux is one of my favourite players ever, but watching him shrug his shoulders for 10 hours might not make for compelling television.

yup

Coming in 2021 ...

Man in the Arena: @TomBrady pic.twitter.com/sObLdTXbIl

— ESPN (@espn) May 21, 2020

not sure what the audience for this is outside of Pats fans. Brady is just not a compelling figure at all, the Pats dynasty is extremely boring and marred with stupid cheating scandals, and the vast majority of the country actively cheered for them to lose. plus being buddy buddy with Trump prolly ain't gonna help sell this

yeah see somewhere in the 10 hours they could've mentioned that

I didn't know there'd been a divorce either. I'm guessing his wife had more control over her absence from the documentary than Jordan did, to the extent she could block any mention of her whatsoever.

in my reading on jordan i don't get the sense that she played into any of the significant moments in his career, and wouldn't have any interesting perspective on them, even if they did have a relationship, which they do not.

she wld prob have an interesting perspective...

(xpost) That seems to be the case. Not the best source, I'm sure, but it's all I could find.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/11650721/michael-jordan-wife-yvette-prieto-the-last-dance-netflix/

But some fans have been left confused why Yvette doesn't contribute to the series.

As it turns out, director Jason Hehir didn't believe that interviews with Jordan's wife, ex-wife or children would benefit the documentary.

He told The Athletic: "I wasn't interested in the opinion of any wife or kids in this.

"We had the storytellers we wanted and I felt like we had the story covered from every angle."

I guess he changed his mind on the kids at some point.

I'm thru epi 6 and thought there'd be a lot more of that "all access" footage, based on what I'd heard about the doc. Also hasn't been as much of the current Jordan interview(s) as I expected.

think I've said this before on ILH, but why can't we get the full footage of that Dream Team Monaco scrimmage????????????

tbc that piece is referring to his second wife, who was like 19 during the last season.

Didn't know that, either. Maybe she's not even allowed to be mentioned in newspaper pieces explaining why the second wife's not mentioned.

ugh at brady's last dance if for no other reason than the GUY IS STILL PLAYING, it makes no sense to do a jumbo retrospective on an active player

also brady has approx. 1% of the charisma of jordan.

hey just wanted to koolaid man into this thread to say the real karl malone sucks

yup

🐦[Coming in 2021 ...

Man in the Arena: @TomBrady🕸 pic.twitter.com/sObLdTXbIl🕸
— ESPN (@espn) May 21, 2020🕸]🐦

not sure what the audience for this is outside of Pats fans. Brady is just not a compelling figure at all, the Pats dynasty is extremely boring and marred with stupid cheating scandals, and the vast majority of the country actively cheered for them to lose. plus being buddy buddy with Trump prolly ain't gonna help sell this

The “extremely boring Patriots dynasty” featured a star tight end who was literally a serial killer.

they already did that movie tho lol

i think if a doc was as well made as this one and the subjects were as candid a lot of teams wld be worth doing if prob not as good as the bulls

read somewhere that Venus and Serena would be worthy subjects of a long doc series

anyway with how successful this one was im sure well get to see more

showtime lakers seems like a no brainer

The cheating scandals are super interesting and he’s extremely involved with one of them. Also he’s the greatest football player of all time.

true but they were covered nonstop while they were going on and I can't see Brady signing off on a doc that even hints that he might be guilty so I would guess they'll just be papered over or framed as a challenge Brady had to overcome

I agree he's the best ever, in fact his legacy is maybe even more impressive than Jordan's since football dynasties are more difficult due to injuries and single-elimination playoffs and he managed to do it twice while being one of the oldest players in the league. But Patriots football isn't really that fun to watch, most of their deep playoff runs involved them getting a bunch of timely breaks vs. way more interesting teams, plus they just so happen to be the least-penalized team during the playoffs by a wide margin. More importantly virtually everyone outside of MA rooted for them to lose, nothing like the Bulls where almost everyone around the world was a fan

well it is not gonna be on my tv thats for goddamn sure

gross

the reason this worked is cos it was 20 years later and mj let the legend grow over that time. he's m/l stayed out of the news over that time. i dont care what brady has to say while hes still playing, or even a year or two removed from it. he's already done his own documentary on facebook or whatever that was.

apparently dwyane wade released a documentary during this bulls one? lol you gotta let this stuff simmer for a while ffs

if they had to do a football one I think Brett Favre would be fun. Packers were garbage for like 3 decades before he came along, he had a pretty unique style of quarterbacking, some pretty crazy highs and lows, and a bunch of memorable teammates. Plus the whole Aaron Rodgers/insane Vikings season thing which I still resent him for but even now seems scripted

damn Karl is cool af

Karl Malone got a 13-year-old pregnant when he was 20.

Fuck that dude.

Yeeesh I didn't know that

Thing with the Patriots is that it was never any fun

Showtime Lakers would be amazing

We watched a showtime lakers vs celtics finals recently and my son was shocked at how boring it was

His son from that statutory rape is former NFL player Demetrius Bell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demetress_Bell#Relationship_with_Karl_Malone

x-post

yikes, also was unaware of that

karl malone is also presently likely knees deep in a 8chan qanon thread from what i recall of his politics

he's country, and not in the fun way

he seems like more of a nevertrumper, from my twitter sleuthing. Follows a lot of Huntsmans

https://hoopshobby.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/malone01.jpg

https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*cRMrPbS19fe_01xQHXxfHw.jpeg

https://salsaspeaks.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/molone-motorcycle.jpg

lmao

wow

"Hey, let me drunkenly animate your photos in about 25 to 60 days"