For the past five Sundays, an average of 5.6 million domestic viewers tuned in to ESPN to watch “The Last Dance” documentary, but that doesn’t really tell the story. More watched on Netflix, and after each episode, the story of Michael Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls became the central topic of sports debates, podcasts, articles, YouTube wormholes and tweets — a mix of reviews, fact-checks, hagiographies and untold stories.
With live sports paused in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, “The Last Dance” became a cultural event. It was exhausting, and yet it wasn’t exhaustive.