But Rodman being Rodman, there are still plenty more that didn’t make it in. The Last Dance covers many of Rodman’s most famous moments: his relationships with Madonna and Carmen Electra, his penchant for cross-dressing, his impromptu mid-season trips to Vegas. “Dennis was bizarre, but what made it work was Phil and Michael’s understanding that, to make it work on the court, you had to give him some rope,” former teammate Steve Kerr recalls at the end of episode three. He was the league’s most controversial star, but The Last Dance makes the point that Rodman was ahead of his time, not just in the tattoos and the piercings, but also in his determination to be exactly who he wanted to be.
Photo: Frank Trapper/Corbis via Getty ImagesĪfter ESPN’s The Last Dance spent its first two installments focusing on the Bulls’ Holy Trinity of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Phil Jackson, Sunday night’s episodes put the team’s trickster demigod Dennis Rodman in his favorite place: the spotlight.Īs the documentary reminds us, Rodman was a singular character in the Jordan-era NBA, an unheralded player who did the dirtiest jobs on the Bad Boy Pistons, then reinvented himself as a hair-dyeing, ref-abusing, dress-wearing cartoon.
