The Last Dance: LeBron fans, do us a favor and don’t make it about him
By Ronald Agers
The much-anticipated ESPN documentary “The Last Dance” will premiere on Sunday April 19th. It’s the only thing these days the NBA fans have to look forward to. Lake Show Life has some advice for LeBron James fans around the world. Enjoy the documentary and please keep the comparisons and G.O.A.T. conversation to yourselves.
The ESPN documentary “The Last Dance” airs on Sunday. Interesting sports is back on TV for awhile! Hallelujah!
It has been just over a month since the NBA shut down back on March 11th, 2020. Soon after, one by one, most of the other sports leagues around the world followed suit. The combination of the loss of March Madness and potentially the NBA playoffs has left basketball content to a grinding halt.
Due to the worldwide social distancing mandated by the federal government to battle the threat of the COVID 19, or coronavirus pandemic, we’ve all been looking for things to watch on TV.
What’s worse, TV is looking for anything that is entertaining for people to watch. ESPN, to their credit has tried, but the H-O-R-S-E challenge just didn’t do it.
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The low point of all sports creation on TV was watching Paul Pierce come out in a sleeveless ski jacket to compete against a world-class athlete in Zach Lavine in a competition. Isn’t Lavine the same dude that beat Aaron Gordon in a slam dunk contest? This live event showed that ESPN and NBA are both in the same sinking boat of desperation of showing something, no check that anything that won’t force NBA fans to Netflix.
The NBA 2K challenge only held off the inevitable for a week. Let’s be honest here, if it wasn’t for Patrick Beverley taking it as serious as he does against the Lakers, would anyone really have cared? When he exited the semifinals, the exposure of the tournament followed him. The sports content challenges aren’t only in ESPN’s laps. There is an actual article about J.R. Smith hating Hennessy as a drink of choice.
Now the sports stimulus package will be released Sunday before some fans get their stimulus checks in the mail. Some sports fans may be more appreciative.
Thank God the requests for ESPN to release “The Last Dance,” it’s 10-hour docuseries about the final season that Michael Jordan spent with the Chicago Bulls was honored. It’s not like the NBA and ESPN had much choice at this point. The past Lakers championship games will get old after a while. With the current team sitting at the top of the Western Conference, the games will only serve as a reminder of how close this team is to another one.
Normally NBA documentaries of this magnitude usually come out in June to ride the momentum starting from the NCAA tournament through the NBA Finals. But obviously in terms of when people have more time to watch it, when just about everyone is home quarantined might be more convenient at this point. Also the documentary makes Sunday the day that all media outlets know fans will show up to watch no matter what.
LeBron James knows this all to well. His growing media company and Space Jam 2 coming out next year, he knows how marketing works. He dropped the science on the “Road Trippin” podcast (via ESPN) before the documentary was moved up.
"”If they release that thing right now? The views on it?” James said. “Listen, if I’m Michael Jordan, I’m going in there and I’m making a conference call and I’m like, ‘OK, what’s the reason that we’re going to hold on to it until June now? Compared to now when everybody is at home?’ Because it’s done [being edited]. It’s done. Yeah, it’s done.”"
Then LeBron joked that ESPN couldn’t fire Richard Jefferson because he was his friend after Jefferson joked to release it early.
Now that it has been moved up to Sunday, Lake Show Life wants to make a small request.
Just watch The Last Dance, enjoy it and for the grace of all that’s good, don’t make this about LeBron James!
To new readers (Welcome by the way!) that might be shocked that a Los Angeles Lakers website would make such a request, please let us explain.
Most of the basketball analysis on this site (post games and basketball features!) are not totally based on statistics. Basketball has so many facets to the game we cover which sets us apart from many other NBA sites. The easiest way to cheapen this experience is to start this LeBron James scored more points than Michael Jordan or the Finals records.
It’s also an easy way to promote the event. ESPN has already started.