The Last Dance, the actual season ended 21 years ago. The 10-part documentary? Just a little over a year.
The fireworks though from the post-Dance moves are still being felt—first with some comments from then-Chicago Bulls center Luc Longley who wasn’t mentioned much in the documentary. Bill Cartwright and Robert Parish did say somethings too but the biggest bombs dropped Michael Jordan’s way were from Scottie Pippen who feels The Last Dance aired some dirty laundry.
For the record, I agree with some of Pippen’s points.
For the record, I am a huge Scottie Pippen fan. I have his jersey, his shoes, his trading cards.
I do feel sad this has all happened.
I do agree and thought upon its airing that the timing of the documentary was auspicious as to remind today’s generation there was a Michael Jordan. Furthermore, I was disappointed there wasn’t much of Toni Kukoc, Ron Harper and Longley who were integral players on the second wave of Chicago’s “three-peat” teams.
Whose oversight that was I have no idea. I thought it was wrong and dumb.
So seeing Michael Jordan pay tribute to Luc Longley in an Australian television interview and documentary was making up for that glaring error.
Back to Michael. The Last Dance also painted unflattering pictures of him as the controversy surrounding the publication of the book, The Jordan Rules, was featured. Ditto with the Rene Esquinas book, Michael and Me, that talked about Jordan’s gambling addiction.
If they featured the part where during a timeout in Game 5 of the 1991 National Basketball Association Finals where Jackson asks Jordan with a choice expletive who among his teammates was open and Jordan initially didn’t answer, that would have evened out the revealing scales.
But they didn’t.
For the record, when that happened, Jackson angrily pressed him for an answer, Jordan replied, “Paxson.”
“Then get him the [insert choice expletive in here] ball.”
If they were willing to show Pippen’s weaknesses, they should have showed Michael’s as well.
If Jordan was paid for the documentary and his teammates none, that is wrong too. Whoever made that decision is wrong as well.
Furthermore, I wish they focused on the 1997-98 season, The Last Dance, and not backtracked. There are enough Bulls documentaries that feature the previous title teams.
I guess though, the previous years were featured for context. I assume this was done for today’s crowd and not those who grew up following these Chicago teams and bought every championship video.
In his upcoming book, Unguarded, Jordan isn’t the only one he took a shot at. He is said to have fired broadsides to Isaiah Thomas, Charles Barkley, Phil Jackson and John Paxson among others in his Unguarded.
This is a man who has clearly had enough of feeling disrespected and is not afraid of burning bridges at his age. Actually, he just didn’t burn them. He nuked them.
I do agree that Jordan—and every other superstar—gets more press and praise than the rest of the team. But is that his fault?
Pippen came to the NBA when Jordan was already the Man at the Bulls. And it is no secret that then-General Manager Jerry Krause built a team around Jordan.
Unlike when Magic Johnson joined the Los Angeles Lakers, the star was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar so it wasn’t his team.
When Michael retired for the first time, Pippen became the Man in Chicago. But he does gripe about that when Jackson let Kukoc take the last shot in the play-offs against the Knicks.
Now when Scottie moved to the Houston Rockets for the 1998-99 season, he was with Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley and Michael Dickerson.
Among those four, he wasn’t even the star. It was Hakeem then Barkley. He was third in scoring. While Barkley and Olajuwon had more rebounds than him.
When he moved to Portland, was Pippen the Man? The Man was Rasheed Wallace followed by Steve Smith. Damon Stoudemire even had a slightly bigger assists average 5.2-5.0.
To be fair, Pippen did pick it up in the play-offs and he continued to be one of the best defensive players around. But with a better team than what he had in Chicago in 1993-95, they didn’t win.
Shannon Sharpe, in his defense of Pippen in The Undisputed, said that Scottie’s career was underrated. And I agree. Said Sharpe, “Any time you play with a historically great player, you’re going to be devalued. It took Kobe playing without Shaq for us to get a proper appreciation of who Kobe really was.”
Even with Pau Gasol and Ron Artest around, Kobe had become Kobe. He strapped the Lakers on his back. Something Pippen was not able to do with Houston and Portland.
Look, we aren’t disparaging one of the NBA’s greatest ever players. I feel him.
But come on.
You were intimidated by Xavier McDaniel and the Detroit Pistons. Look at the video. Who was defending you? Jordan.
When Scottie feuded with Shaquille O’Neal, he even backed down.
Said Shaq who had the last word: “He made it personal when he put @Shaq, we got six rings like he was the main focus of the six rings. You were not the main focus of the six rings. Don’t make me pull up the scouting report. You wasn’t even a factor on the scouting report. It was all about Mike.”