"You hear a lot of negative things about Dennis Rodman, but people don't actually know Dennis Rodman," says Dennis Rodman.
In episodes three and four of The Last Dance, the hall of famer, who won five NBA titles, finally gets his due. As was the case with Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen in the opening episodes of the ESPN documentary, Rodman's basketball biography is covered in full, before flashing forward to his role on the '97-98 Bulls, which desperately needed him to step up as Pippen recovered from ankle surgery. As Jordan notes early in episode three, Rodman initially "hadn't accepted the role that Scottie wasn't going to be around." But after a sluggish start to the season, including a game in which Rodman was kicked out early (which made Jordan furious), Rodman that night went to MJ's hotel room to smoke a cigar. As a a mea culpa, it was the best Rodman could offer. "He didn't say an apology, but by him coming to my room, it was his way of saying, 'Look man, I fucked up,' Jordan says. "And from that point on, Dennis was straight as an arrow, and we started to win."
With the Bulls streaking, Pippen recovered from his injury and rescinded his trade demand. He returned to the Bulls 35 games into the season. Suddenly, Rodman wasn't the Robin to Jordan's Batman anymore, and he grew restless. "When Scottie was out, Dennis was a model citizen, to the point that it was driving him fucking insane," Jordan remembers. The year prior, in the middle of the 1997 NBA Finals, Rodman bolted to Las Vegas on a team-sanctioned trip to blow off some steam. Once again, in 1998, he made the same request. Coach Phil Jackson granted Rodman a 48-hour Las Vegas vacation-which would end up lasting longer than 48 hours-a decision Jordan (colorfully) disagreed with, and not without reason.
The Last Dance captures what happened next: Mostly, lots of partying, especially with actress Carmen Electra, who was then dating Rodman. In one of the more entertaining scenes from the documentary, Electra and Jordan separately describe how that party came to an end, with Jordan showing up and yanking Rodman out of his hotel room bed.
In Rodman's defense, he worked himself back into shape remarkably quickly. For all of his off-the-court antics, he was always a gym rat, and kept an unusual workout routine for a hooper: he'd head to a court with friends at three or four in the morning, and asked them to shoot around. He, meanwhile, focused solely on... rebounding. He learned to react to where the ball was coming off the rim, and it paid off with seven NBA rebounding titles. "Dennis was one of the smartest guys I ever played with," Jordan says in The Last Dance. Adds Rodman: "I was pretty much like that rash that players couldn't get rid of."
Slightly less flattering, but equally true.
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