The Last Dance is a perfect distraction in a world starved of sport

Let me get one thing out of the way: I don’t even really like basketball.

I am a football fan and basketball’s high score just feels a little bit too much. When someone scores in soccer? It is exhilarating. In basketball, this feeling is dull. Then there is the size issue. In football, the biggest player in the world could be 6’1 “like Zinedine Zidane or 5’6” like Maradona. In basketball, almost all sizes are 6’5 “or larger. For me, this speaks for a sport that focuses more on physical properties than on pure technique or skill.

But none of that stopped me yesterday from sitting on Netflix, constantly updating the homepage and waiting for the first two episodes of The last Dance drop.

The Last Dance: A new, unique sports documentary directed by Jason Hehir that focuses on the 1997-1998 NBA season from the perspective of the legendary Chicago Bulls. A series that promises invisible footage of the most famous basketball team and, more importantly, the most famous player, Michael Jordan.

The Last Dance was originally scheduled to be released in June of this year, but given the corona virus and subsequent cancellation of pretty much every sporting event – the EPL, the NBA, the NFL, the Olympics – the powers to choose are a great favor to all of us move the release date forward.

The first two episodes of The Last Dance were shown yesterday, April 19, on ESPN in the United States. The remaining eight episodes will be released weekly until mid-May. Everyone else, including me in Australia, was allowed to watch Netflix.

The last dance is a big deal. For one main reason: 500 hours of all-access material that has been kept in the safes for more than 20 years. In 1997 Jordan allowed the cameras to track the team throughout the season with one restriction: the footage could only be used with his permission. He did not give permission until almost 20 years later in 2016.

Fast forward to 2020 and me, a man who refreshes Netflix for a documentary that focuses on a sport in which he has only a temporary interest. My knowledge of basketball begins and ends with the players of the classic SNES game NBA Jam, but that hardly matters at this point. I want the last dance. I need the last dance. I have to absorb its nutrients.

Because at the moment we live in a world without sports and The Last Dance is all I have.

Take for granted

If I ever pinch myself and wake myself up from the corona virus’ living nightmare, I will never Take sport for granted again.

It seems trivial, but I can’t stop thinking about the moments that were stolen from us.

No Liverpool won the English Premier League for the first time in 30 years. No Andy Murray returns triumphantly to Wimbledon. No climbing at the Olympics for the first time. No Khabib Nurmagomedov against Tony Ferguson.

Given the tragedy of Kobe Bryant’s death, I was even invested in basketball this year and started to follow the LA Lakers, hoping that Lebron James and his team could bring the NBA title back to a city in mourning.

For the past two months, I’ve been absolutely hungry for sports and the real stories they offer.

No TV show can repeat that, not even reality shows. Television can surprise you, defy expectations, but doesn’t feel unpredictably like sport. Sport lives and breathes in the present moment. Each and every one of his participants moves with a strong agency and that creates a noticeable tension. A tension that sticks eyeballs on screens around the world. A tension that is currently very lacking in my life.

The last dance cannot be indeed Sport, but it is a strong reminder of its strength. The traces of what makes sports magical are in his DNA. The stories, the turning points, the individual conflicts on and off the square. The intrigue. It doesn’t matter that it’s the cops. It doesn’t matter that it’s Jordan. The last dance could be about anything. The Last Dance could be about Manchester United winning the Champions League in the last minute of play in 1999. Serena’s return slam victory after birth. Conor McGregor defeated Jose Aldo at UFC 194 in 13 seconds.

What matters is that the last dance feels like an event, almost like a live event. An event that promotes sport at a moment when it is almost completely absent from our lives. We do this by reliving one of the most exciting stories.

And right now it’s about as close as we’ll all get to reality.