By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
‘The Last Dance’ will premier on Sunday at 21:00 ET (Monday, 03:00 CET) but it took 23 years from the initial making of the raw footage, to finally presenting it to the world. Why so long? Michael Jordan had the final say and he hasn’t been easy to convince.
ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne shared the process of making ‘The Last Dance’ possible and it all started with, back then, the NBA Entertainment producer Andy Thompson who proposed his idea to Adam Silver (head of NBA Entertaiminmet) and executive Gregg Winik.
“I remember thinking, ‘Man, this guy is going to retire.’ And we’ve never really fully documented a year in the life of potentially the greatest athlete in the history of the sport” Thomspon said.
Silver made the next step which meant convincing Phil Jackson and as long as the Chicago Bulls coach had the option to sent cameras away from time to time, he was OK with it.
But making a deal with Jordan? That was the key. And Silver had the perfect pitch – giving him the ‘vault codes’.
“Our agreement will be that neither one of us can use this footage without the other’s permission. It will be kept — I mean literally it was physical film — as a separate part of our Secaucus [New Jersey] library. Our producers won’t have access to it. It will only be used with your permission. Worst-case scenario, you’ll have the greatest set of home movies for your kids ever created.”
Greatest set indeed and with what an ending. Jordan hit the winning shot in the 1998 NBA Finals to clinch the Bulls‘ sixth NBA title and second three-peat. Gold.
However, despite huge all-around interest over the years to make it, nobody really got close enough to even negotiate with MJ himself. That is until Jordan’s perception changed as the times changed and Mike Tollin came along.
“The first page was a letter that I’d written to him: ‘Dear Michael, every day kids come into my office wearing your shoes, who’ve never seen you play. It’s time,'” Tollin said.
That was the first page of the lookbook the producer prepared for the meeting – which took great effort to just organize – and Jordan made sure to read everything in there.
The last page was a list of documentaries, movies and shows Tollin and his company, Mandalay Sports Media, had done up to that point, in 2016.
One, in particular, caught his eyes. It was the one about Allen Iverson. “I watched that thing three times. Made me cry. Love that little guy,” Jordan told him and that seemed to lock in his decision to finally say “yes”.