![]() stipulated that the studio would provide him with a gym to practice in so he could seamlessly re-enter basketball in the fall. The Last Dance details how part of Jordan’s contract with Warner Bros. The Last Dance reaches the filming of Space Jam in its eighth episode production on the film started the summer after Jordan returned to the NBA late in the 1994-’95 basketball season (following, in rapid succession, his father’s sudden death, his surprise retirement a couple of months later, and an ensuing stint in minor league baseball). Which is why the Space Jam stuff (or really, the lack thereof) stands out. There’s plenty about his father’s death ( James Jordan was murdered in 1993), about Jordan’s gambling and the media circus around it, and about inter-player quarrels and spats, but nothing too dishy, nothing that really feels like it pulls back the curtain. The Last Dance (much, it seems, like Jordan himself) is only interested in Jordan’s personal, off-court life insofar as it relates to the game. There’s little focus on the topics that a documentary might otherwise explore - Jordan’s personal life, his family, his love life, what he likes to eat for lunch, and other stuff fans often want to know about. One of Jordan’s stipulations for participating in the project (directed by Jason Hehir) was that he’d always have the last word, so the series naturally reflects his point of view. Jordan owned the sole rights to a great deal of the footage of the Chicago Bulls during their 1997-’98 season, which is one of two main narrative threads running through The Last Dance (the other centers on Jordan’s career). Michael Jordan in The Last Dance, laughing at interview footage the directors have shown him on a tablet. Plus, there’s Jordan himself, talking about his career, his memories, his thought process, and his drive to succeed. I hadn’t fully realized the pure pleasure it would be to watch hours of Jordan dunking, interspersed with various figures I only hazily remember telling different versions of what went on behind the scenes of the ’90s pro basketball scene. The 10-part ESPN documentary series (the final two episodes air this Sunday night) is more entertaining than I was expecting. I recently got curious about Space Jam again because, like seemingly everyone else, I’ve been watching The Last Dance. I didn’t watch much NBA basketball, but I had watched the 1992 Dream Team. His domination of the sport made it seem natural that he was everywhere. He was omnipotent and omnipresent, hawking sneakers, McDonald’s, cars, breakfast cereal, soda - all on top of ruling the basketball court. Still, even in the pop culture (and sports) desert I mostly inhabited in the 1990s, I knew who Michael Jordan was. But until recently I’d never seen Michael Jordan play basketball with. Eventually I untangled them, and eventually I saw Spaceballs. Then for a while, in the morass of pop culture backlog, I somehow crossed Space Jam and Spaceballs in my head. So the July 21, 1996, release of Space Jam, when I was 13 years old, passed me largely unheeded.
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