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NBA Players Loved ‘The Last Dance’ Premiere Like Everyone Else

ESPN premiered the first two episodes of their 10-hour, 10-part The Last Dance documentary telling the story of the 1997-98 Bulls and the backstory of how that came to be the end of a dynasty.

Like all of us basketball starved fans that were clamoring for ESPN to move the release date up, which they mercifully did from June, NBA players past and present were thrilled to have The Last Dance in their lives for two hours on Sunday night. Players joined fans on Twitter, offering their live reaction to what we were seeing and learning about Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and the Bulls.

One of the big points that gets hit home early and often in the documentary is the tension between the team and general manager Jerry Krause, which for some current players was a lesson about something they didn’t know about previously.

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From there, the documentary dove some into Michael Jordan’s backstory as a college athlete, and like just about everyone else, seeing old clips of Jordan at UNC — and seeing Mike’s mom read an adorable letter he wrote to her asking for stamps and money — was excellent.

Then we got to rookie year MJ, where he took the league by storm, prompting Dwyane Wade to be in awe of what a young Jordan was doing.

As the doc shifted back to the Bulls’ trip to France, Paul Millsap was inspired by MJ’s fashion choices, while C.J. McCollum wants to see the footage that didn’t make the cut for the documentary.

The second episode dives into Scottie Pippen’s history and getting locked into a wildly undervalued contract, which got a lot of reaction from NBA players who want to make sure folks put respect on Pippen’s name and sneaker game.

The clip they showed of Charles Oakley smacking around Pippen as a rookie got a funny reaction from Donovan Mitchell.

The story Pippen told of deciding he wasn’t going to “f*ck my summer up” by having surgery until right before the season got plenty of laughs from players like McCollum as well.

Once the credits rolled, players had the same response as most.

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