Top 10 lessons that I learned from “The last dance”

Abdelkader Rhouati
4 min readJul 11, 2020

“The lase Dance” is one of Netflix’s last original documentaries, which traces the history of Michael Jordan’s last season 98–99 on the Chicago Bulls team. In this season the general manager of the team decided to dismiss the coach Phil Jackson the next season, therefore Jordan has declared that he will not play without Phil, and if the coach leaves the team, Jordan will do the same. It was clear to everyone back then that the 98–99 season will be the last season for the extraordinary team of Jordan and his teammates, who have won up to 5 NBA championships, including 3 in a row. This is why this season was named “The last Dance”, where the team have tried to win their 6th championship.

“The last dance” : Netflix original documentary

I’m not a big fan of documentaries, but “The last dance” was different. From an artistic point of view the documentary was very successful. The documentary is likely to be a Hollywood movie. It includes drama, suspense, complicated family and human relationships, ups and downs … For people who do not know the story of Michael Jordan, The suspense will catch their attention throughout the 10 episodes of the documentary. The director of “The lase Dance” has chosen to have a main timeline for the 98–99 season of the Chicago bulls team, but he inserted many other past timeline which present to us the major stages and stories of each of the main characters: Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Phil Jackson… and others.

From a personal point of view, This documentary inspired me a lot. It is for this reason, I wish in this article to share with you all, the 10 lessons that I learned from “The last dance” :

1Success is not a journey of a single day. It tooks 7 years to Michael Jordan in NBA competition to finally win his first championship in 1991 : 7 years of provided effort … 7 years of relentless training … and beyond all of that, 7 years of defeats !

2 Success is not the result of one person. Michael Jordan may be the best NBA player ever, but without his teammates, Scottie, Denis, Steve, Kukoc and the others, he could never have won his 6 NBA championships, or even becoming the greatest player of NBA.

3It’s simple : Success equals hard work. We all tend to focus on moments of glory. Those moments that make us dream. But we must not forget that behind all those glories, there were long moments of hard work.

4 Success will come only after a failure. The one who will succeed is only the one who can overcome failures and go back to hard work.

5 Winning a championship is a real success … Being able to do it a second, third, … and even sixth times … it’s extraordinary feat that only the real a legend who could achieve. Michael Jordan was able to lead his team to win 6 times the NBA championship , almost successively, in the years of 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98 (note that the 94/95 season Jordan had left basketball and only played the half of season 95). This is what distinguished Michael Jordan from other players and wrote his name among the greatest.

6 What distinguishes Michael Jordan from other players is not his talent or his physical capacities, but rather of that the exceptional competitiveness which always pushed him to be better, to surpass himself and to become number 1. “If you want that Michael Jordan succeeds, just tell him he can’t do it” confirmed his father.

7The win has a price, and leadership also has a price. Michal Jordan was not perceived by these teammates as a nice person. He was very perfectionist and he always pushed harder his teammates to go forward and became better, which wasn’t always pleasant.

8 “All start with a hope” was the last word of Michael Jordan in this documentary. When He started his professional career in 1984 as NBP Player, He hoped to make the city of Chicago proud. He hoped his team to become recognized as a legend in the history of the NBA. He hoped to become number 1, and So he was..

9 Do not judge people for their appearance, but rather for their acts in life. The story of Michael Jordan’s teammate Dennis Rodman was very inspiring for me. He lives, looks and acts differently, but when he is in the field, he has shown great commitment, and has made considerable efforts to make win his team. No one can deny his great contribution as a defender in the championships won by Michael Jordan and Chicago Bulls. For That he was respected from all.

10 Everything has an end, this is life norm. Everything start at a moment, and must end on another. The Chicago bulls dream team have won 6 times the NBA championship. This team must had an end in one way or another. And Of course another team must come, with another superstar, and will exceed their feat.

Michael Jordan playing Baseball which Chicago White Sox

Bonus story: I was really surprised by this information. In fact, after the assassination of his father, Michael Jordan wanted to realize one of his father dreams, which is to see him playing baseball. So in 1994, He signed a professional contract with Chicago White Sox team of baseball. He played many games with them, and showed a remarkable progress game after game.

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Abdelkader Rhouati

Data scientist & Ph.D. researcher on AI. My area of expertise is around Deep Learning, NLP, and XAI