“The Last Dance” has aspects from the 1992 NBA Finals between the Chicago Bulls and Portland that might not sit so well with Clyde Drexler.
The recent hit 10-part ABC/ESPN/Netflix documentary series highlighting all-time great shooting guard Michael Jordan and the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls title-winning team “The Last Dance” got mostly positive reviews. But not everyone was a huge fan of the docuseries, namely a few former star foes of MJ and the Bulls during those great teams they had in the dynasty years.
One of those former foes of MJ and the Bulls that didn’t seem overwhelmingly excited to see what The Last Dance had to offer was the Portland Trail Blazers and Houston Rockets Hall-of-Fame shooting guard Clyde Drexler. While he was playing with the Trail Blazers, “Clyde the Glyde” faced MJ and the Bulls in the second year in which they would win the NBA Championship.
In the 1992 NBA Finals, a deep and talented Blazers team featuring Drexler as the primary star tried to keep the Bulls from winning back-to-back titles, obviously to no avail. And the feelings MJ had about that NBA Finals matchup against the Blazers was made well-known in The Last Dance. He didn’t feel like even an eventual 10-time NBA All-Star selection like Drexler was anywhere close to his league.
Moreover, Drexler recently briefly opened up on why he didn’t want to watch The Last Dance in a piece from Mark Medina of USA Today. Here’s what Drexler and that piece from USA Today had to say on the matter.
"An average of nearly 5.6 million people watched “The Last Dance” documentary on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Former NBA star Clyde Drexler was not one of them.“I didn’t watch it. I lived it,” Drexler told USA TODAY Sports with a laugh. “Hopefully down the road, I’ll get some opportunities to do that.”When that will be? Who knows. Drexler joked he has a handful of books and Netflix shows to consume first. Drexler also has his own documentary to watch."
Drexler and the Blazers are about to have their own documentary released on NBATV called “Rip City Revival”, highlighting those talented and deep teams from 1989-1992. He seems more intent on catching that right off the bat than he did The Last Dance.
MJ and the Bulls knocked off Clyde and the Blazers in six games in the 1992 NBA Finals. That would be the second of six titles that MJ and the Bulls won during the 1990’s. This would be the only time that the Bulls would face the Blazers in the finals.