There might not be live sports to watch at the moment, but the debut of The Last Dance has galvanized basketball fans.
The highly-anticipated 10-part documentary series chronicling Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in the 1990s debuted Sunday in the United States and Monday in Canada, much to the delight of executive producer Andy Thompson, who began working on the project more than 20 years ago.
“Sometimes, when you think it’s the right timing for something, fate intervenes and this is the perfect time and the perfect place and the perfect era for this to be released in,” Thompson told Sportsnet 590’s Good Show on Monday. “Because like everything else, when you have the length of history to look back on, people’s perspectives get a little deeper and guys become more truthful and honest.
“Michael has really accepted like, ‘OK, I’ve got to really just lay it all out there and let everybody see exactly who I am and what this whole thing is about, warts and all.’ If we would have done this 20 years ago it would not have been the same and it would have only probably been 90 minutes.”
The Bulls won six championships between 1991 and 1998 with Jordan being named Finals MVP all six times. Jordan helped cap off the dynasty with some last-second heroics in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz.
“The minute Michael stole that ball from Karl Malone and hit that shot and he ended the sixth championship in that historic, storybook ending way, when we wrapped our shoot that night we knew we had the holy grail of all sports documentaries ever made,” Thompson said.
Listen to the full interview with Thompson via the audio clip embedded in this post.
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