1. Old-school highlights with old-school music
Technically these were two separate moments, but I’m combining them into one for the sake of this article.
My absolute favorite editing trick The Last Dance did was pair old-school highlights with old-school music. There was one of those moments in each of the first two episodes.
In the first episode, there were young MJ highlights with the song I Ain’t No Joke by Eric B. & Rakim playing in the background. This scene had everything I could’ve wanted and more. There were cradle dunks. MJ was wearing a gold chain. The Bulls were wearing their stellar cursive-letter jerseys. Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas were providing sound bites. And the song made all of it infinitely better.
Then, in the second episode, there was footage from Jordan’s 63-point explosion against the Celtics in 1986 with I’m Bad by LL Cool J playing in the background. Again, it was the perfect song choice for the highlight package.
I could (and probably will) watch those two scenes over and over again for the rest of my life.