The Last Dance Part 2 Recap: Jordan and Pippen

The first episode of The Last Dance was nothing but filled with entertainment. We were reliving the past of the greatest dynasty ever in basketball. The first episode was a backdrop on who the Bulls were before Jordan, how Jordan affected the Bulls, and talking about the staff.

The Last Dance Part 2 Recap: Jordan and Pippen. In this episode, episode two, we get to hear about how Scottie Pippen came to the NBA and the feud of Jerry Krause and Scottie Pippen. Not even kidding, Jordan called Pippen selfish as a contract situation was going down, but why?

The Last Dance Part 2 Recap: Jordan on Pippen, “Scottie was being selfish!” Here are my top five takeaways from this ten part documentary.

1. Anybody can traded…. even Scottie Pippen

The feud of Scottie Pippen and Jerry Krause began, how? It all started when Pippen was angry about his contract, because the money players were signing for was high. Pippen felt like he got robbed, felt like he was being underpaid.

He was being paid $18 Million for 7 years, normally a contract goes for 4-5 years worth that kind of money. To have Michael Jordan’s tag-team partner only getting $2.5 Million per year, doesn’t that seem odd?

The Bulls were getting a massive win as Scottie could have easily asked for $35 Million for 7 years, but luckily for the Bulls he didn’t. What made this escalate was the fact that Jerry Krause made it public that they were looking to trade Pippen. He said he would listen to offers for Pippen if the price was right, and what made matters really worse was the fact that the owner wasn’t going to reconstruct Pippen’s contract.

This is what Krause had to say about the situation at hand:

“Anybody can be traded,” Krause told reporters at a 1997 news conference. “Part of my responsibility is to listen to other teams when they talk to me about our players. We think Scottie Pippen is one of the top couple players in basketball and feel very strongly about him. … We had a number of offers that we thought were good offers. I’m never going to stop being aggressive.”

Then Jordan commented on his friend and tag-team partner, Scottie Pippen. He called Pippen selfish for waiting to get his surgery done to on purposely sitting out the two months, plus Jordan thought he was blowing this out of proportions.

2. The effects of not having Pippen on the team (holding out)

When Scottie Pippen was holding out due to injury and contract situations, Jordan had to be the louder voice. The team got have to a rocky start, started the season by going 4-4.

In the documentary we see behind the scenes footage about the effects of the not having Pippen in games and in practice. Jordan was so frustrated one day at practice he starts screaming at Ron Harper, why? Because he is doing something wrong on the court, Jordan was trying to get everybody ready for the next game by doing this.

“I let my anger motivate the players,” Jordan said. “ ‘I want this. Do you guys want this?’ My innate personality is to win at all costs. If I have to do it myself, I’m going to do it.”

The team just wasn’t having support for Jordan with Pippen holding out, Krause knew he had to do something.

3. Bird and Jordan

The documentary travels back to 1986, when Michael Jordan returned from his foot injury. When he got back he was playing against the Boston Celtics in the playoffs.

This time period is interesting for Michael and the Bulls, as Jordan never had good support from the team. Really no good backup on or off the court.

When the Bulls were swept by the Celtics Jerry Krause was looking to rebuild the team. He got Bill Cartwright (trade), Scottie Pippen (Draft), and Horace Grant (signed). This is how the three-peat originated.

The last time that the documentary mentioned Larry Bird and Michael Jordan together at the same time was when Jordan did something unbelievable.

When Jordan scored 63 points the following season, everybody was in shock including Larry Bird.

This is what Larry Bird had to say about Jordan when he scored 63:

“God disguised as Michael Jordan.”

4. The childhood of Michael Jordan

During this film we see the beginnings of Michael Jordan in North Carolina, they go in-depth about his love for baseball and being cut from high school basketball.

The documentary continues by saying that Jordan was motivated by two things, racial climate and trying to please his father.

“You had racism all over North Carolina and all over the United States,” Jordan said. “There was a lot of it around there. As a kid, [I thought] this is where I don’t want to be. I want to excel out of this. My motivation was to be something outside of Wilmington. For me, it became athletics.”

Second part to the childhood of Michael Jordan was trying to please his father, his father might have been the hardest part. Why?

Because he favored Larry, Jordan’s brother, more when it came to outside work and tools; mainly tools. Favoritism was often shown by his father, did Jordan care? I think so, but all I know for sure is the fact that Jordan always took someone up on a challenge.

In the documentary Jordan was talking about how competitive Larry and him were. They sometimes got into fights, that was how competitive they’ve gotten. It didn’t matter what kind of sports you were talking about, they did it all.

5. Jordan’s stubbornness about injuries

When Jordan needed to get surgery on his foot back in 1985, he was very stubborn about it. The doctors were telling the owner, management, and Jordan that there would be a 10% chance of his career ending if he played through the surgery.

Jordan didn’t want to hear that, he wanted to play. The owner asked him a question: imagine if he had a headache and we gave you pills but one could kill you while nine could heal you, would you take?

This is how Jordan responded:

“It depends on how bad the headache is” 

Even though Jordan was willing to take the chance, everybody else went against it. He sat out a few months due to this injury, and to this day he still doesn’t know what the big deal was. Even Jordan said it’s only 10%.

Conclusion

Part two of The Last Dance recap has concluded, this one talked about Scottie Pippen and the contract situation and how Jordan’s early life reflected onto his basketball life.

This episode was mainly Jordan and Pippen, the next episode recap will be about Dennis Rodman and the things he did with the Pistons and with the Bulls.

Do you guys think that management should have reconstructed Pippen’s deal or no? I want to know your answer, submit it in the comment section below.

Thank you for reading The Last Dance Part 2 Recap: Jordan and Pippen!