The culture that saved us: How The Last Dance got me through 2020

For several weeks in May, I wanted nothing more than to grow a foot overnight. Sure, if you’d offered me a world in which Covid-19 did not exist, I wouldn’t have said no. A vaccine, which at the time seemed pure fantasy? Yeah, go on then. But what I really, really wanted - more than a return to normality - was to be six foot nine inches of pace and precision, scoring baskets for the Chicago Bulls (95 - 96 NBA season, obv).

To say that I was obsessed with The Last Dance - the Netflix documentary about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls team that stormed the NBA during the 90s - is an understatement. After watching the first episode, I ordered £60 worth of books about basketball via next-day delivery. By the third episode, I had recruited disciples for my own girls’ basketball team, poised to start practice as soon as we were allowed to meet each other in person.

Certainly, I am a sucker for a sports film or documentary - the symphonic soundtracks! The teamwork! The triumphs against numerous adversities! - but even for me, my reaction to The Last Dance was outsized. And sure, perhaps it had something to do with the peculiarity of the time - it is surely not a coincidence that I became obsessed with a show about a team during a period of protracted isolation from most people I knew.

But The Last Dance is so much more than a show about a basketball team. And yes - before you say it - I know that Jordan’s own production company Jump 23 was credited as a partner in the series, and yes, I am sure that had something to do with his portrayal as a man, myth and legend. But his ego is part of the story - and despite the slightly compromised objectivity, it feels far from sanitised. Plus: he is a legend. His rise from college wunderkind to the NBA’s most mythical player is extraordinary, by everyone’s telling. His athleticism was sublime – just watch the acrobatics as he outpaces every other player on the pitch and then seemed to hover in the air for a second as he propelled the ball through the basket! Plus, while the documentary likely had the MJ stamp, it still offers a (relatively) unforgiving portrait of his arrogance, his single-mindedness, and the obsession and sometimes cruelty that he conjured in order to stay on the top of his game.

Not that this is one-man show. I was enthralled by the shamanic coach Phil Jackson, the hippy whose inimitable coaching style was influenced by Eastern philosophy - and won him six NBA titles with the Bulls. Scottie Pippen! The counter-balance to the swaggering MJ, the shy Arkansas boy whose lack of ego destined him to playing a frustrated second fiddle. Playing through that game against the Utah Jazz, with a back injury so bad he required steroid injections during the break? Yes, obviously I cried.

Oh and anyone remember Dennis Rodman? The bad boy of basketball with the bleached hair and the nose ring, who dated Madonna and Carmen Electra, and who’d skip out on practice for a weekend in Vegas - with everything that entailed - then come back and grab a devastating 17 rebounds? Pure theatre.