What the doctor ordered

For a sports-rabid metropolis like Chicago, a sports-less world is tough to take. Covid-19 has tethered us to our homes, without the dazzle of Javier Baez’s glove work or Eloy Jimenez’s rockets into the seats as distractions.

The city that canonized Mike Ditka finds itself adrift without a game to watch, a box score to check. Chicago’s allin when it comes to defeating the coronavirus, but it craves reconnection with its teams. Heck, will our beloved, beleaguered Bears even play this fall? There is one source of salve.

This weekend, ESPN aired Parts One and Two of The Last Dance, a 10-part documentary on the Chicago Bulls’ magical 1997-98 season, their sixth and last championship. The series will continue to air on successive Sundays through May 17.

Leave it to Michael Jordan to wrest us from our covid torpor. Director Jason Hehir has crafted a deep dive into not only the luster of that final championship run, but into Jordan unvarnished. At times, Jordan sounds abrasive in a way that might jar many Bulls fans.

One example, courtesy of The Chicago Tribune’s Phil Rosenthal, who wrote about the upcoming series, comes from Jordan himself, commenting on the documentary. “When people see this, they are going to say: ‘Well, he wasn’t really a nice guy. He may have been a tyrant,’” Jordan says when discussing how he pushed his teammates. “Well, that’s you — because you never won anything.”

Other interview subjects range from former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to Dennis Rodman’s ex-wife, actress Carmen Electra, and singer Justin Timberlake, an avid Air Jordan shoe fan.

Die-hard Bulls fans may like that the documentary includes ample behind-thescenes footage filmed by an NBA Entertainment crew that followed Jordan and the Bulls during that last championship season. Those too young to remember that year can soak in, for the first time, one of the most exalted chapters in this city’s sports history.

For those of us old enough to recall, rewind to 1998, to bars and living rooms across Chicago exploding with delight at the sight of Jordan and Scottie Pippen embracing on the floor of Salt Lake City’s Delta Center after the Bulls slammed the Utah Jazz to win their sixth NBA title. Remember the rally at Grant Park, when 300,000 Bulls fans drowned out Jordan at the podium with chants of “One more year! One more year!”? As dreamy as that moment was, there was also resignation throughout the city that the run was done. “This was our last dance,” coach Phil Jackson told the crowd, “and it was a wonderful waltz.”

Sports channels have been airing reminiscences of other great teams, great games to fill the sports coverage black hole the coronavirus created. For Chicago, though, nothing medicates like a memory lane stroll through halcyon days when MJ soared, Pippen drained threes and Jackson helmed it all with his “Zen master” approach to the game.

The coronavirus has battered us both physically and psychologically. Amid the gloom of this pandemic, we need a dose of Chicago when it reveled in MJ’s greatness, when the Bulls put the city on top of the world.

We think The Last Dance will be just what the doctor ordered.