Dominique Wilkins On Why He Never Watched Michael Jordan's 'The Last Dance'

Dominique Wilkins spoke about Michael Jordan's 'The Last Dance' docuseries in a recent interview with the JAXXON podcast. Wilkins claimed that he hadn't actually watched the popular show on Netflix, saying that he was there in real time to witness Jordan's meteoric rise and his incredible career.

“I never even seen it (The Last Dance)… because we lived it. I saw it every game, I know his mentality since college. I saw it in him in college when he was a freshman, I was a junior and I saw it then, the toughness, the determination, the will to win. That was just common knowledge back then. So I didn’t need to see the documentary to know that a lot of stuff was factual.”

Dominique Wilkins has had a longstanding relationship with Michael Jordan, having played against each other during college when Jordan attended the University of North Carolina, and Wilkins represented the Georgia Bulldogs prior to their NBA careers.

Much of their NBA careers overlapped each other, however, Jordan was able to ascend to heights that Wilkins never had the opportunity to.

Michael Jordan's 'The Last Dance' docuseries covered his career in its entirety, covering his childhood, his high school and collegiate basketball career, including his historic NCAA championship win with the Tar Heels in 1983, to his historic rise among the ranks of the NBA, until the end of his tenure with the Chicago Bulls.

Wilkins was one of the few people who weren't part of the list of Jordan's contemporaries interviewed for the docuseries. It appears he had no ill will over not being part of the project, however, it is unclear whether Wilkins refused to take part or wasn't asked to be part of the project.

'The Last Dance' Became An Iconic Docuseries

'The Last Dance' docuseries was released during the spring of 2020, right as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning. The timing of the release allowed the show to get a lot more eyeballs on it than it would have had were it released under normal circumstances.

On top of that, there were a lot of famous, viral memes that were generated from the show, whether it was Jordan's now-iconic 'I took that personally' phrase or the clip of him laughing at Gary Payton's comments during the documentary. It was a great show that allowed fans who weren't there to witness Jordan's incredible career in real-time.

The docuseries gained a lot of traction, but some were skeptical about Jordan's motivation for releasing the docuseries. Scottie Pippen, Jordan's former teammate, claimed that MJ put out the documentary to gain relevance in the modern era, where a player like LeBron James was dominating the headlines and the discourse.

Regardless of the motivations behind the series, there is no denying how captivating the series was. While Dominique Wilkins did not watch the series, several other people did, and it also generated a great deal of fan interest in basketball, and the bygone era, which not many modern fans had gotten to see.