The Last Dance Review: Takeaways from Episode 5 and 6

The fifth and sixth episodes of "The Last Dance" are both emotional and mind-blowing as both episodes of the ten-episode documentary about Michael Jordan's final championship-winning season with the Chicago Bulls during the 1997-1998 season of the National Basketball Association (NBA) revealed many things that even surprised fans who were already watching the fabled Bulls team back then. While almost all basketball players aspired to be "like Mike" at some point in their careers, it was never easy being Michael Jordan even with all the fame he was and is still receiving to this day. And it was well-documented by the film crew that worked on "The Last Dance".

Nobody is and will be perfect. We all have our flaws. So did Michael Jordan.

And that flaw, among many flaws, was his gambling problem or so they called it during the 1992-1993 season when the Bulls were trying to win a rare three-peat.  That gambling issue was highlighted when the Bulls went down 0-2 in the Eastern Conference Finals against Patrick Ewing and the New York Knicks. That was the time when the Knicks were tagged as the next coming of the Detroit Pistons' Bad Boys who beat the Bulls in the playoffs in the past. The Bulls went on to finish the series in six games en route to their third straight NBA Finals trip. 

Michael Jordan, after losing Game Two of the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals, decided to go to Atlantic City to gamble at a casino. That decision by His Airness alone created a wildfire of speculations that Michael Jordan was struggling with a gambling problem and eventually, His Airness himself addressed things by stating that he did like gambling and that he didn't have a gambling problem because he did, he would be starving. He would have sold his house. But more importantly, he was making more money than anyone else in the NBA at that time as he also had multiple endorsements on top of his salary from the Bulls. As David Aldridge said it, 10,000 dollars was like 10 Dollars for Michael Jordan. But the attempt to ruin Michael Jordan's image didn't stop with the gambling issue. 

After the Bulls beat the Los Angeles Lakers for the 1991 NBA championship, Sam Smith came out with the book "The Jordan Rules" which told readers everything that happened the Bulls run in the 1990-1991 season. And apparently, Michael Jordan was pictured as a tough teammate in the book as it was said in that book that Jordan allegedly punched a teammate during practice among other bad things. Nobody in the sixth episode of the documentary cleared who said those things or were those things true but one thing remained certain by the end of the fiasco, Michael Jordan remained focus to his goal and that was to win championships which he did in 1993 against Charles Barkley and the league-leading Phoenix Suns. Barkley may have won the Most Valuable Player award that season but it was Jordan and his Bulls who ended up hoisting the NBA championship trophy. It was about finding the right motivation and for MJ himself, that motivation was to prove to everyone else that despite his issues, he is and will always the greatest player of all time because he delivered. 

Episode Five of "The Last Dance" also showed how the name Michael Jordan changed the fortune of the sneaker industry right in his rookie season in the NBA.

Can you imagine Michael Jordan being the face of Adidas? Or even Converse? Because it almost happened and it didn't. 

According to His Airness' longtime agent, David Falk, he brought Michael Jordan to talk and make a deal with Converse because at that time Converse was the official shoes of the league.  But since Converse already had the likes of Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Bernard King, and even Isiah Thomas endorsing their products, Converse turned Michael Jordan down saying that they cannot envision MJ being ahead of Larry Bird, Magic Johnson among others. And we all know how ahead Jordan went by the end of his career.  

In the same episode, Michael Jordan that he always liked Adidas and so they went to talk Adidas but during that time, the company was dysfunctional and even though they would love to have MJ on board, they cannot make a shoe work at that time. So David Falk thought of approaching another giant in the sneakers industry: Nike.

There was one problem: Michael Jordan didn't like Nike and if not to his own mother, those Air Jordan that basketball fanatics own now, never happened. 

Michael Jordan went down and meet with the big bosses of Nike who made a big pitch. The pitch was so big that his father said that Michael would be a fool for not taking the deal. How big was the deal?

Michael Jordan, a rookie in the NBA at that time, was paid 250,000 US Dollars which was way more than the other best endorsers Nike had that time. And where did the name "Air Jordan" come from? At that time, Nike was more of a company known for their running shoes and they just came out with a new technology called the "Air Soles" for their running shoes and since MJ spent a big chunk of his game running in the air, Falk suggested "Air Jordan" as the name of the shoe line dedicated to Jordan alone and the rest was history. In the first year of Air Jordan, Nike made 126 million US Dollars which was way bigger than the original four-year projected return which was three million Dollars. Jordan didn't just change the culture of basketball. He changed the culture of the sneakers industry and he's still doing so until now.

If there's one person whose appearance in the documentary has been long talked about, it was that of the late and great Kobe Bryant. The fifth episode even opened up with the line "In loving memory of Kobe Bryant"

As short as it may be, the early goings of the fifth episode tackled about how the late Black Mamba who became the youngest All-Star starter in what went down as a specular encounter in the 1998 All-Star Game, tried to learn everything he could from His Airness. Kobe also mentioned how Michael Jordan taught him how to shoot that turnaround shot that became Kobe's go-to-move all throughout his 20-year stint in Los Angeles and even calling Jordan as his big brother. In the end, Kobe Bryant said that he wouldn't have won those five championships that he won with the Lakers without the guidance that Michael Jordan was providing him. Tissues, anyone?

Six down. Four to episodes to go. "The Last Dance" is nearing its climax and when it does, be sure to catch it because like Michael Jordan himself, it's going to be majestic.

Photo is from Heavy.com