The Last Dance continues to impress on Netflix

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I went into this docuseries thinking it was going to be completely about Michael Jordan and a lot of it is, for obvious reasons. Without Michael the Bulls likely would have been an average team in the 80's and 90's. The Last Dance does a pretty fantastic job showing that Jordan, who is likely the best NBA player the sport has ever seen, is not a team on his own, and this is evidenced in the first 2 episodes where they show how the Bulls still got beaten pretty convincingly by many teams in the 80's even though Michael was scoring 40 points a game.

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What happens in episode 3 might be a bit of a surprise to Bulls / M.J. fans though as they dive into how much of an integral part of the game Dennis Rodman was and how without him, the Bulls likely wouldn't have been the dominant force that they became in the 90's.

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Many might not be aware the Rodman played at an extremely minor college and unless you lived in Oklahoma you probably didn't even know about Dennis because Southeastern Oklahoma State University probably doesn't / and didn't get a lot of attention on the national scale. Rodman was an absolute beast there though, and caught the eye of the Detroit Pistons who drafted him in the 2nd round in 1986. This is where Rodman became a key player in what became known as the "Bad Boys of Basketball" and resulted in the Detroit Pistons becoming known as the most feared and hated team in the NBA.


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When Rodman was traded to San Antonio, it looked like he was going to end his career there as his reputation for being a very difficult player to deal with made him unattractive to other teams. So how did he end up playing for Chicago? I guess they had the right amount of egos in their team already.

Rodman was considered a huge gamble, but his rebounding skills and toughness in the paint is exactly what the Bulls needed in order to progress.

So why am I talking about all of this? Because this series is outstanding and points out a lot of things that "regular" sports fans are probably unaware of: I had no idea about the politics of basketball and apparently there is a great deal of that in the game. At one point Rodman says something along the lines of "I would play basketball for anyone for free, but you gotta pay me a lot for all the other bulls**t that comes along wit it."

If you are not watching this, you really should. I am not even a die hard sports fan and tend to be more interested in sci-fi or action movies but the "inside look" that this documentary shows about what goes on inside of one of the most successful teams of all time is entertaining even for casual fans of the game.

4 episodes of the series are already released and they will continue to release 2 each week for the next 3 weeks.

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