The Last Dance: 6 Things we learned from episodes 1 & 2

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4. The NBA’s Coke (And I don’t mean Cola) culture of the 80’s

If Jordan thought he would be joining a fraternity of singularly focused, unwavering basketball-junkies that revolved their lives around the game upon his arrival to the NBA, he couldn’t have been more incorrect.

And perhaps there were some junkies, but these were of an entirely different nature, the kind you’d expect to encounter far, far away from an NBA locker room. But yet Jordan somehow found himself living with a few them.

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The man had no clue what he’d gotten himself into when he stepped foot into the association in 1984, especially considering the fact that he’d been used to the straight-laced, no-nonsense regime of Dean Smith in the years leading up to that point.

His initial encounters with his new Bulls compatriots, however, epitomized the exact opposite.

He gave an account of one of his first memories as a rookie in Chicago that took place at a hotel he and his teammates were staying in during the airing.

“I start knocking on doors…” Jordan sets the scene, “I get to this one door, and I could hear someone say, shhh, someone’s outside. This deep voice says, ‘who is it?’ I say, it’s MJ, and they say, ah, f–k, he’s just a rookie. Don’t worry about it.”

“So they open up the door. I walk in, and practically the whole team is in there. It was things I had never seen in my life as a young kid. You got your lines over here, you got your weed smokers over here, you got your women over here.”

Jordan abruptly turned around and returned to the location from which he had come. No wonder the team had performed so abysmally prior to his arrival.

As he put it, Jordan was more than content to hold steadfast to his natural college routine, and spent his nights undertaking miscellaneous activities like hanging out in his apartment, watching television, giving parents a phone call or two, and most importantly of course: his homework – studying the game.

And when he gained enough power to set the mold for what the dynamics of the team would look like (which included their off-court activities), they started winning.

The 80’s Bulls had been infamously dubbed as “the traveling coke circuit” according to the film. The 90’s teams: they won six championships. I’d say Jordan had a little something to do with the turnaround.