The Last Dance Part 1 Recap: Reach for the stars

The Last Dance is a documentary about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. This documentary takes you behind the scenes of the 1997 NBA season. You will hear from voices like Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, Kerr, Jackson, and much more.

I finally got to watch The Last Dance Part One yesterday night, and the first part was incredible. I thought how they introduced Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, and the front office was amazing. They had some really good moments and so many things I took away from Part One of this documentary.

This is The Last Dance Part 1 Recap: Reach for the stars, I will be telling you my top 5 takeaways from Part One of this ten part documentary.

The Last Dance Part 1 Recap: reach for the stars, 5 things I took from this episode:

1. The beef of the Bulls and GM Krause

Within the first 15 minutes of the documentary we get hit with the shocking news that Phil Jackson won’t be coaching in Chicago anymore, but why? The general manager Jerry Krause told Phil that even if he won 82 games he wouldn’t be coming back to coach the team.

We found out very quickly that Krause was a self-centered, delusional manager that had a attitude. The documentary made it very clear, during the 1997 season footage, that Jerry wanted to be recognized for creating this dynasty. He even said this quote:

“organizations win titles, not players”

He later said that he was misquoted, but to be honest I think he meant what he said. His relationship with Phil Jackson was already down the drain and now Jordan and Krause has a sour relationship too.

Jordan was very good friends with his head coach and said he wouldn’t play for another head coach; he left it at that. This was for another reason, he got offended when Krause made that bold statement.

This is what Michael Jordan had to say on that statement made by Jerry Krause:

“I would never let someone who isn’t putting on a uniform and playing each and every day dictate what we do on the basketball court,” Jordan said in a recently taped video interview for the documentary. “The most important part of the process is the players. For him to say that is offensive to the way I approach the game.”

More shocking twists and turns came about during the first episode about Krause, Jordan, and some of other guys being filmed.

2. Michael Jordan only focused on basketball NOT partying

Michael Jordan revealed that the only thing he was focused on was basketball, he didn’t want to be caught up in the other stuff. He said he was still acting like he was in college, because he didn’t want to risk anything.

In the documentary he revealed that he was knocking on players doors to find out what they were up to; and on one door he knocked on a guy with a deep voice said “who is it?” Jordan said “its MJ,” they let him in because he was a rookie.

Everybody was inviting Jordan to stay but he decided against it, why? Because he thought he would be in the same amount of trouble as the other players if he would have stayed in this room and one of the Bulls staff members saw this.

Long story short, he never liked doing that stuff. He only wanted to participate in playing basketball. Anything besides that he wasn’t going to do.

3. Bob Knights input on Jordan, Draft Day!

Now, surprisingly Michael Jordan went third in the 1985 NBA Draft. The two guys behind him were Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Bowie. Hakeem Olajuwon was a very good pick, you can see him as the first pick of the draft. For Sam Bowie not so much, Portland needed a center desperately and didn’t consider Jordan to be much of a center so they went with Sam.

Until this day, the Sam Bowie pick is very infamous for many reasons. When he was transiting from college to pros, of course being the number two pick, he didn’t set the bar high. He was a bust moving forward in his career, because he was no Hakeem Olajuwon or Michael Jordan.

It’s kinda tough when your put in the middle of one of the greatest big men ever and the goat himself, Jordan.

When Jordan finally got to speak with the media after getting selected by the Bulls, he said he wanted to turn them into a winning “program” like the Celtics and Lakers.

Bob Knight was very impressed by Jordan, Knight could see the greatness inside of Jordan. He said this:

“the best basketball player I’ve ever seen.”

The hype was getting real during college, before Draft Day, and during his NBA career. Jordan never failed to not live up to the hype, he did everything right from in practice to on the court.

4. “Jordan is bigger than the pope!”

This quote held truth when Jordan and the Bulls made it to Paris, France for a preseason game. The Paris fans mobbed him and the Bulls, they were so excited that they were here.

Fans were coming at Jordan left and right for autographs, during the footage you can see that everybody was around them. You couldn’t move without having someone right behind you, right beside you, or right in front of you.

This is what (at the time) commissioner David Stern had to say about Jordan during their trip to Paris:

“There will never be another team quite like this,” Stern said proudly at ring night, once the Bulls were back stateside. “They’ve gotten to be the number one sports team in the world.”

5. ”Send me some stamps”

One of the funniest things happened during this documentary. It was Jordan’s mother, Deloris Jordan, that read a letter that Jordan sent to his mother.

The documentary revealed that this was made by Michael Jordan in college as he was asking for $20 dollars. When Jordan was hearing his mother read this letter out loud, he was laughing like crazy. He couldn’t contain himself because of this last sentence of this letter.

“P.S. Sorry about the phone bill. Please also send me some stamps.”

Conclusion

There we have it, those were my top 5 takeaways from episode one. We had some funny moments, some behind-the-scene moments, and we had the Jordan “is bigger than the pope” moments.

The first episode is something to look back on as it explains the introduction of the Bulls team, how they got Jordan, and the egos around the building. Many people are wondering how the Bulls could have been different if Krause didn’t tell Jackson that this would be his last year. Plus the fact he made Jordan upset with his comments about the team, Jordan gets his payback throughout the documentary by pulling pranks and jokes on him.

This has been an incredible opening to the greatest dynasty runs ever, I will be posting the second episode recap very soon.

Remember if you don’t want anything to be spoiled then I wouldn’t recommend reading these recaps, I would suggest watching the documentary parts first then the recap. This documentary is so good, I might have to watch it twice! The Last Dance Part 1 Recap: Reach for the stars!