ESPN didn't expect 'The Last Dance' to have this kind of impact

Compared with live events, ESPN’s documentaries usually serve as a prestige supplement, providing a little extra for viewers while enhancing the brand and picking up the occasional Oscar.

But now live events largely have disappeared, and the doc du jour is as big as sports docs get: “The Last Dance,” the 10-part series on the Michael Jordan-era Bulls.

The 2020 NBA playoffs it is not. For now, though, late 20th century NBA playoffs are holding their own.

“I’m not sure we understood that when these were on the air, it would be like a live event,” said Connor Schell, ESPN’s executive vice president for content and a co-creator of the “30-for-30” documentary franchise.

“I’m not sure we’ve ever programmed a documentary film or series that has had this effect where everybody is watching in the moment and talking about it on social media and discussing it the next morning. That has been incredibly cool to see. That has been a really amazing outcome of this project.”

“The Last Dance” originally was to premiere on ABC on an off night of the NBA Finals in June, a plan that would have left it competing with premium live content.

That was before the COVID-19 pandemic, of course. On March 16, ESPN executives and director Jason Hehir first discussed in detail moving up “The Last Dance.” Hehir said he could complete the project in time for a mid-May conclusion.

The discussion then moved to format: One-hour episodes on 10 consecutive nights? One-hour episodes on 10 consecutive Sunday nights? Two one-hour episodes on five consecutive Sunday nights?

That last one was the choice, and it has paid off. Through eight episodes — the last two will be aired Sunday night — the series has averaged 5.6 million viewers on initial showing, by far the most for an ESPN documentary. Viewership only has grown beyond the premieres thanks to video on demand, DVR use and encore showings. The totals for episodes 1 and 2 were 13.75 million and 13.89 million as of Tuesday.

And it has been a life preserver for content-starved media members and fans.

“What’s been great, and the part that I didn’t expect that has been really interesting to watch,” Schell said, “is how this series has fueled the sports dialogue across ESPN’s assets, but across everyone’s assets — columns in newspapers, sports talk radio conversation, debate shows on other networks.

“I had no understanding that that was going to happen to the degree that it did.”

There was not much doubt, given the subject matter, that people would watch the series, which is built around behind-the-scenes footage of the 1997-98 season and recent interviews, especially three with Jordan. But “The Last Dance” has been an aesthetic and creative success as well.

Schell said he was optimistic when he and ESPN Films executives John Dahl and Libby Geist began seeing early video cuts and transcripts. Then came March 11, when the NBA suspended its season.

“At that point, all expectations of how people would respond to this just sort of went out the window,” Schell said. “We didn’t know. We felt this was the right thing to do.”

Schell credited Hehir and his team for their flexibility. An editor on the project, Devin Concannon, who grew up in Massapequa, said Hehir broke the news to his staff that ABC’s Robin Roberts would be announcing the decision to move up the series. He joked that he expected LeBron James to take credit because James had applied public pressure for the move.

“I think the decision was already coming down the pipeline before he tweeted about it, but if anything, he helped with the press,” Concannon said.

As the series has unfolded, the biggest criticism has centered on Jordan and his people having roles in approving the use of the ’97-98 video and in the production itself — and how that might serve to portray him in the best light.

But Hehir and Schell insist Jordan did not attempt to limit the topics or shape how they were presented beyond his own recollections.

“One of the conversations up front was in order to do this, the project has to have credibility,” Schell said. “It has to be something that addresses gambling. It has to address the interpersonal dynamics of the team and league. It has to address personal tragedies and triumphs.

“There can’t be subjects that are off limits, can’t be subjects that are edited to make anyone look any way.”

Schell credited Estee Portnoy and Curtis Polk, executives at Jordan’s JUMP company, for accepting that reality.

Jordan also bought in but was worried that he might come off as overly harsh in his treatment of teammates. Scott Burrell, on whom Jordan was unusually tough, told Newsday he had no problem with how Jordan dealt with him.

“That team was special,” he said. “They had the best talent. But the best talent wasn’t going to win unless you meshed, unless everybody was on the same page, unless everyone worked, offensively and defensively, unless everyone knew what their jobs were.

“He wanted everybody to know what their jobs were, every time we stepped on the court. Because he was the one getting triple-teamed every night. so when that happens, we better know what we have to do to help him or at least help the team be successful.”

Schell acknowledged that when one uses someone else’s intellectual property in telling a story, “you are forgoing some small level of control.” But without Jordan on board, the project as we know it would not have happened.

“I take a little bit of umbrage with the idea that Michael Jordan had creative control here,” Schell said. “That’s not how we structure our contracts.”

He added, “I also take a little issue with this idea that somehow Michael Jordan was sitting in the edit room over Jason’s shoulder saying, ‘Do this, do that,’ because that’s practically not what happened.”

And, finally, this: “I haven’t spent a ton of time thinking about the criticism of it. We’re proud of the end product.”

ESPN hopes to build on its Sunday night momentum with films on Lance Armstrong, Bruce Lee and Mark McGwire / Sammy Sosa in the coming weeks. Each figures to attract a big audience; none figures to be as big as Jordan’s.

Schell said one of his favorite things about “The Last Dance” and Hehir’s approach has been its broad appeal, from those who experienced the Jordan era to those too young to have done so.

A younger generation, Schell said, is “getting to experience this and understand what those Bulls teams meant and Jordan meant, not just to the NBA but to culture.

“He might have been the most famous person on the planet. Watching the reaction of younger fans experiencing it has been really interesting to see.”

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.