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The Last Dance (Chicago Bulls Netflix Documentary)


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Anyone watching The Last Dance? It’s a 10 part Netflix documentary series about the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls season which was ultimately the end of their domination in the 90’s. 
Whether you’re a life long basketball fan, a new fan, someone who got sucked into the Michael Jordan hype in the 90’s but hasn’t followed basketball since, or whether you’ve never had an interest in he game, it’s well worth a watch and will interest most sports fans. 

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4 minutes ago, Super said:

Didn't they used to show NBA on BBC1 on a Saturday night back in the day?

Channel 4 had coverage of the finals and the all star games in the 90’s. During the 96-97 season they had 3 weekly programs. A midweek midnight show that played extensive coverage of the game of that week. Another late show in the week that showed highlights and news of all the weeks games and a Sunday morning magazine type show that was more interviews and stuff. Don’t remember the BBC ever showing any NBA

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Loved basketball when I was younger. New York knicks were the team I seemed to follow because of our family who lived in New York at the time but obviously the team of the 90s were Chicago Bulls. Jordan, pippen, rodman, kukoc. Will definitely be watching at some point. 

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There were some great players in the 90s. Reggie Miller and Karl 'Mailman' Malone were two of my favourites!

Other names come flooding back:

Alajuwon, Sprewell, Shrempf, Shaq, Stockton, Ewing, Mourning, Dumars, Majerle, Barkley, Payton, Mutombo, Robinson, Kidd, Hardaway...

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On 26/04/2020 at 17:58, mozo said:

There were some great players in the 90s. Reggie Miller and Karl 'Mailman' Malone were two of my favourites!

Other names come flooding back:

Alajuwon, Sprewell, Shrempf, Shaq, Stockton, Ewing, Mourning, Dumars, Majerle, Barkley, Payton, Mutombo, Robinson, Kidd, Hardaway...

You missed my second favourite player ever, afterJordan obviously... Grant Hill! I used to have a Hill Pistons and Dream Team jersey. I lived in it.

What a documentary. Most interesting thing from my perspective is everything Jordan put into being the best. Not always the most popular with his own teammates, let alone other teams, but refuses to let anyone putting in less than 100%. Not just the best player, but also athlete and sportsman.

How anyone can argue he isn’t the greatest of all time is beyond me. People say LeBron is the greatest but there is no comparison.

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34 minutes ago, formerly known as ivan said:

You missed my second favourite player ever, afterJordan obviously... Grant Hill! I used to have a Hill Pistons and Dream Team jersey. I lived in it.

What a documentary. Most interesting thing from my perspective is everything Jordan put into being the best. Not always the most popular with his own teammates, let alone other teams, but refuses to let anyone putting in less than 100%. Not just the best player, but also athlete and sportsman.

How anyone can argue he isn’t the greatest of all time is beyond me. People say LeBron is the greatest but there is no comparison.

Apologies, that was remiss of me!

I have so much respect for Jordan the competitor. What a player.

But I don't think I'd like him off the court. Not my kind of person at all. He'll be gutted about that.

Magic Johnson seems a lot more magnanimous. 

On the Bulls team, Jordan is too obsessed with competing, Rodman seems a bit frazzled and Pippen just seems a bit gloomy, bless him. So I think Horace Grant would be the one I'd sit next to on the team coach.

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Just finished watching this tonight. I didn’t know any of the stuff about his dad. Great sportsperson , great show. 

All I kept thinking was how has this all taken so long to be made?!? 

Turns out Jordan himself owned all the rights to the footage and it took 20 years for someone to convince him they could turn it into a decent show 

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Firstly great doc, was never a basketball fan but you cannot fail but be impressed with Michael Jordan, that 90’s Bulls team and what they achieved, so if you’ve not seen it then get on it!

Watching the doc it really highlighted to me how hardcore the players train and play, and on the court they are hard to the core and take no messing.  I’m in lead to believe this is no different today, in fact American sport in general is like this.

However it highlighted to me how ‘some’ football players have changed in terms of not being hard on the pitch (the faking injury and diving) and actually how football in general seems to tolerate this behaviour as being part of the game, when for years it wasn’t.

And with the current Covid situation, I wondered if fans will tolerate a player rolling around the pitch when not touched and diving to the floor faking injury, as for me it seems even more in bad taste and shows a weakness of sporting character in many ways.

I know Basketball and Football are different games but it would be great to see a return to the professionalism and dedication to win at all costs without cheating in football as shown in this doc.

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With respect, I don't think I agree.

A lot of sports (Basketball and Football included) have changed over the years to lessen the physicality and protect their more technical players.. The players we all used to adore that were hard to the core and took no messing rarely fit the model for the current generation. The players, and all that goes with it, are just a product of the game that has been gradually built by governing bodies that are more interested in creating and protecting marketable assets. 

I say this as someone that probably preferred the game of 20 years ago to today, but I think it's easy to romanticise the years gone by as being populated by honest pros, whereas in reality they cheated just as much - they just did it differently according to the standards of the time. 20/25 years ago would you get players rolling around feigning injury when barely being touched? Not so much. But you'd happily have players throwing in 2 footed tackles to try and take opponents out of the game 5 seconds after the ball had been played, knowing their indiscretions weren't yet likely to be spotted by the limited amount of cameras or officials.

These days we see players we support feigning injury, or exaggerating contact to draw fouls, 50 times every match. If it fits into the slim bracket of obvious cheating then we may call it out, but if it fits nicely enough into the grey area of 'you've seen them given', we are all happy to excuse it if it benefits our team. Ultimately I don't think Covid-19 will change that when the game gets back up and running.

Elite teams in the past had incredible dedication to win at all costs and often pushed the rules to, and past, their limit, and elite teams now have incredible dedication to win at all costs and often push the rules to, and past, their limit. It just looks different.

I do agree with your first point though - The Last Dance was fantastic from start to finish!

 

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First of all totally agree, massively enjoyed it. Just a great story and sense of nostalgia. 

With regards to the 'softer' approach on the pitch, I see your point but you could say that about basketball as well. A lot of what I've heard, read etc has said Basketball isn't as rough and tumble as it used to be, it's now stricter on fouls etc. I think Dennis Rodman said LBJ wouldn't have survived in the 80s/90s for example. 

Obviously with diving it's more obvious and none of us like seeing it but in fairness  players are forced into going down easy these days which is part of the reason it seems 'soft'. If you stay up you don't get the foul so it gives players reason to go down. I've had referees say to players in games that if they went down it would've been a foul but because they stayed up it's not. Obviously not at professional level but what do you expect players to do? Considering that you could argue that they aren't cheating but they are dedicated to try and win at all costs.

 

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1 hour ago, CheddarReds said:

First of all totally agree, massively enjoyed it. Just a great story and sense of nostalgia. 

With regards to the 'softer' approach on the pitch, I see your point but you could say that about basketball as well. A lot of what I've heard, read etc has said Basketball isn't as rough and tumble as it used to be, it's now stricter on fouls etc. I think Dennis Rodman said LBJ wouldn't have survived in the 80s/90s for example. 

Obviously with diving it's more obvious and none of us like seeing it but in fairness  players are forced into going down easy these days which is part of the reason it seems 'soft'. If you stay up you don't get the foul so it gives players reason to go down. I've had referees say to players in games that if they went down it would've been a foul but because they stayed up it's not. Obviously not at professional level but what do you expect players to do? Considering that you could argue that they aren't cheating but they are dedicated to try and win at all costs.

 

But if we all just accept that players have to dive to get a foul the game is gone surely?  It’s embarrassing and the excuse of they have to do it is nearly as weak as how they look for me (I appreciate this is what they churn out in the media).

 What gets my goat is rugby fans mocking football fans about this and I have no real justification for it, which annoys me as I don’t like rugby fans belittling my fave sport!

Im sure basketball has changed as well (This was noted in the doc) but football is  Synonymous with diving and faking injury and as a football fan it gets my goat!  
 

After thousands have died and been seriously ill from COVID, I will have even less respect for a player who fakes injury to gain an advantage, I’d rather we lose than advocate it but I appreciate I’m probably in the minority 

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1 hour ago, ballwinningcentrehalf said:

With respect, I don't think I agree.

A lot of sports (Basketball and Football included) have changed over the years to lessen the physicality and protect their more technical players.. The players we all used to adore that were hard to the core and took no messing rarely fit the model for the current generation. The players, and all that goes with it, are just a product of the game that has been gradually built by governing bodies that are more interested in creating and protecting marketable assets. 

I say this as someone that probably preferred the game of 20 years ago to today, but I think it's easy to romanticise the years gone by as being populated by honest pros, whereas in reality they cheated just as much - they just did it differently according to the standards of the time. 20/25 years ago would you get players rolling around feigning injury when barely being touched? Not so much. But you'd happily have players throwing in 2 footed tackles to try and take opponents out of the game 5 seconds after the ball had been played, knowing their indiscretions weren't yet likely to be spotted by the limited amount of cameras or officials.

These days we see players we support feigning injury, or exaggerating contact to draw fouls, 50 times every match. If it fits into the slim bracket of obvious cheating then we may call it out, but if it fits nicely enough into the grey area of 'you've seen them given', we are all happy to excuse it if it benefits our team. Ultimately I don't think Covid-19 will change that when the game gets back up and running.

Elite teams in the past had incredible dedication to win at all costs and often pushed the rules to, and past, their limit, and elite teams now have incredible dedication to win at all costs and often push the rules to, and past, their limit. It just looks different.

I do agree with your first point though - The Last Dance was fantastic from start to finish!

 

Appreciate all your comments, I just don’t like it, my answer to all the bullshit play acting and diving is if you were playing football with your mates and did it you would look like a dick, so why any pro worth his salt wants to do it in front of a stadium full of fans and millions watching around the world I don’t know.  
 

 

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7 minutes ago, Tinmans Love Child said:

But if we all just accept that players have to dive to get a foul the game is gone surely?  It’s embarrassing and the excuse of they have to do it is nearly as weak as how they look for me (I appreciate this is what they churn out in the media).

 What gets my goat is rugby fans mocking football fans about this and I have no real justification for it, which annoys me as I don’t like rugby fans belittling my fave sport!

Im sure basketball has changed as well (This was noted in the doc) but football is  Synonymous with diving and faking injury and as a football fan it gets my goat!  
 

After thousands have died and been seriously ill from COVID, I will have even less respect for a player who fakes injury to gain an advantage, I’d rather we lose than advocate it but I appreciate I’m probably in the minority 

I have thought this as well over the last few weeks I think it would be viewed much more harshly than it has been pre-Covid, I think spitting will also be viewed very dimly as well.

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25 minutes ago, Tinmans Love Child said:

Appreciate all your comments, I just don’t like it, my answer to all the bullshit play acting and diving is if you were playing football with your mates and did it you would look like a dick, so why any pro worth his salt wants to do it in front of a stadium full of fans and millions watching around the world I don’t know.  
 

 

I think it's just the absolute will to win - players will try everything. 

When I was younger and played football with my mates we wouldn't have dared to roll around and act hurt, but you better believe when the light was fading and we all cared far more that we'd admit, we often almost came to blows arguing over 'goals' that we knew had gone over one of our jumpers rather than between them ?

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1 hour ago, Tinmans Love Child said:

But if we all just accept that players have to dive to get a foul the game is gone surely?  It’s embarrassing and the excuse of they have to do it is nearly as weak as how they look for me (I appreciate this is what they churn out in the media).

 What gets my goat is rugby fans mocking football fans about this and I have no real justification for it, which annoys me as I don’t like rugby fans belittling my fave sport!

Im sure basketball has changed as well (This was noted in the doc) but football is  Synonymous with diving and faking injury and as a football fan it gets my goat!  
 

After thousands have died and been seriously ill from COVID, I will have even less respect for a player who fakes injury to gain an advantage, I’d rather we lose than advocate it but I appreciate I’m probably in the minority 

Agree that diving and feigning injury is wrong and that's an issue. I'm not justifying that. But you say it's gone soft etc but that's because players aren't protected properly if they stay on their feet.

Players going down when fouled to protect themselves and also ensure that the technical and tactical aspects are more present in the game results in better football which I think the majority enjoy more. Far from embarrassing or the game being gone. Probably one of the reasons football's watched and played more than rugby! 

  

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Fantastic documentary and the best sporting one i have seen.

I used to watch the Bulls in the mid 90s and they always seemed a magical team, this program brought it all back.

Michael Jordan is the greatest sportsmen ever in my opinion.

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40 minutes ago, yardy said:

Fantastic documentary and the best sporting one i have seen.

I used to watch the Bulls in the mid 90s and they always seemed a magical team, this program brought it all back.

Michael Jordan is the greatest sportsmen ever in my opinion.

He is certainly up there, but I still think he is second to Ali. Since Jordan, only Usain Bolt immediately springs to mind as a contender.

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I used to love NBA Jam on the Megadrive but otherwise have little interest in basketball. 

But this was a brilliant documentary. The best documentaries should appeal to people who have no/little interest or knowledge in the subject and this was definitely that.

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