ESPN’s documentary ‘The Last Dance’ documented the Chicago Bulls during the Michael Jordan era, which was approximately from 1984-1998. Through that period, and in this documentary we got a chance to dive into the Bulls dynasty and more intriguingly got an inside view of who Michael Jordan (and Scottie Pippen) were.
The first two episodes launched on Sunday, April 19, and we’re here to highlight some notable facts from the debut of the documentary.
Jerry Krause was big trippin’.
Jerry Krause in the 1980s was motivated, cool and he just wanted to taste success, behind his new young talent Michael Jordan. Jerry Krause after five-straight titles started to spazz out. Who tells the greatest coach in NBA history that he’ll no longer be the coach of the team, even if they won 82 games? It was obviously a power issue for Kraus, and the Bulls haven’t recovered since.
The Bulls were doing cocaine in 1984, and Mike wasn’t having it.
MJ talked about how many of his teammates (that will remain unnamed) were living the life on road trips. Lines (cocaine), marijuana, strippers, etc., and Michael was offered to join in. In typical MJ fashion, he was laser-focused on basketball and basketball only. That kind of explains why Jordan led the team in scoring as a rookie with 28.2 points per game.
What happened to Mike’s Fashion?
Well, not much to say here. I’m just going to drop some pictures of Mike from his playing days to his current abominations.
Scottie Pippen grew six inches during his freshman year at the University of Central Arkansas.
Ignore the fact that the most underrated NBA player of all-time went to an NAIA school, and focus your attention on the fact that he started his collegiate career standing at 6-foot-1. He then grew 6 inches in a year to 6-foot-7, which jump-started his illustrious basketball career.
Scottie was 122nd highest-paid player in the NBA in 1997.
This can’t be justified in my opinion. At the time, Pippen was a top-three player in the league, and he was in his last year of a 7-year $18 million contract. He had every reason to be frustrated with Krause, and he had every reason to not want to play for the Bulls anymore.
MJ scored 49 and 63 in the first round of the playoffs against the No. 1 Boston Celtics.
After missing a large portion of time due to a broken foot, Michael came back and willed his team to 30 wins and an eighth-seed in the playoffs. The only problem was, they’d have to play the Boston Celtics who had four eventual NBA Hall-of-Fame players. In that opening series, although the Bulls lost the first two games, Jordan made it clear that he was the future of the league by scoring 49 points in Game 1 and 63 points in Game 2. This man was built differently.
Stay tuned for the summary of episodes three ad four next Sunday.
