Even in a decorated NBA family with five rings, Andy Thompson may be the most qualified to debate which dynasty drew the bigger media circus. Whenever his brother Mychal or his nephew Klay claim their teams were a bigger deal, Andy points them to the late 1990s Chicago Bulls.
Mychal Thompson won consecutive championships on the Magic Johnson- and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar-led Lakers in 1987 and 1988. Klay Thompson's Warriors went to the Finals every year from 2015 to 2019. Andy Thompson was around for all of them, but he was also "a fly on wall" for Michael Jordan's final year, filming the entire 1997-98 season with unprecedented access.
"No way either one of those two eras, those two teams, come close to being in the same type of stratosphere as the Bulls," Andy Thompson said.
After a knee surgery ended his own playing career, Thompson worked at NBA Entertainment for 10 years before coming up with the idea to document Jordan's final season in Chicago. He tagged along with Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman and Steve Kerr as the Bulls went on to win their sixth championship in eight years.
Those Bulls, Thompson said, experienced a kind of Beatlemania that went beyond basketball celebrity, something that will become evident in the following weeks as Mychal and Klay watch the Jason Hehir-directed documentary based on Andy's footage.
"That hasn't happened for any of the Warriors, or any other team in the NBA today," he said. "Not even close."
More than 20 years later, the resulting documentary is "The Last Dance," ESPN's 10-part series that focuses on Jordan's final season in Chicago. After the first two installments aired last Sunday, the final eight will be unspooled over the next four weeks. Thompson talked with the Bay Area News Group about filming that team and what to expect over the final episodes.
