Michael Jordan 'The Last Dance' Top Moments and Reaction from Premiere Episodes

"The best there ever was. The best there ever will be."

Those are the words on the base of the Michael Jordan statue on the inside of the United Center in Chicago. Sports fans starving for content were reminded why that is Sunday with the airing of the first two parts of the 10-hour ESPN documentary, The Last Dance, chronicling the Chicago Bulls dynasty of the 1990s.

The documentary places particular focus on the 1997-98 campaign, which was the franchise's sixth and final championship team with Jordan leading the way.

Head coach Phil Jackson famously deemed that season the last dance since a number of factors, including tension with the front office, made it clear it was going to be the final chapter for the Bulls as they were constructed with Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman and others.

The tension served as the backdrop for the start of the film.

Episode 1

Footage from the 1991 championship over Magic Johnson and the Los Angeles Lakers, 1992 championship over the Portland Trail Blazers, 1993 championship over the Phoenix Suns, 1996 championship over the Seattle SuperSonics and 1997 championship over the Utah Jazz appeared before any basketball in the 1997-98 campaign to underscore the fact that the front office wanted to rebuild during the middle of a dynasty.

Which, frankly, seems almost unthinkable in today's game.

General manager Jerry Krause was immediately cast as the foil to Jordan, Jackson and the rest of the players and coaches. He was described as someone who wanted credit for the team he built even though the attention was going elsewhere, but it was a misquote that stood out the most.

"Organizations win titles, not players," he supposedly said, although Krause explained his actual quote was "players and coaches alone" don't win them and the original one was transcribed without the key word "alone."

While the quote clearly bothered the players, who were shown constantly mocking the general manager, it was Krause's relationship with Jackson that served as another obstacle. Jordan said he wouldn't play for anyone else, Jackson called the relationship "a circus," and Krause didn't even invite the coach to his wedding.

After owner Jerry Reinsdorf flew to Montana to convince Jackson to return for a year, Krause said it would be the coach's last year even if he won all 82 games.

It was no secret who Jordan was referencing when he said following the 1997 title, "Have a sense of respect for the people who laid the groundwork so that you could be a powerful organization."

The Last Dance wasn't all drama, though, as there were plenty of amusing moments stretching from Jordan calling his baseball attempt an "18-month vacation" and saying rebuilding doesn't always work because the Chicago Cubs had been doing so for 42 years to the fanfare the Bulls received on a trip to Paris.

There was even footage of Jordan's mother, Deloris, reading a letter he sent home from college at the University of North Carolina where he asked for stamps and apologized for the phone bill.

It served as a natural transition to His Airness' UNC days and a breakdown of his championship-winning shot in the 1982 title game over Patrick Ewing and Georgetown. "He gave me the green light," Jordan said of head coach Dean Smith drawing up a play that could have gone to James Worthy.

"It gave me the confidence that I needed to start to excel at the game of basketball."

Excelling at basketball is quite the understatement indeed.

Montages of Jordan's rookie season made it clear he was going to change the Bulls' typically downtrodden fortunes. Even President Barack Obama—hilariously described as a "former Chicago resident"—described how difficult it was to get tickets for games after the Bulls drafted Jordan.

That rookie campaign turned into the most legendary career in NBA history.

Episode 2

That legendary career would not have been the same without Pippen.

Pippen took center stage in the second episode, and he was not immune to the tension surrounding the team. Despite being far more than just a sidekick as a lockdown defender, facilitator and head-turning dunker, he was the sixth-highest-paid player on the Bulls and 122nd-highest-paid player in the league when contract talks loomed at the start of the 1997-98 campaign.

The documentary highlighted questions about whether he would retire when he was sidelined with a ruptured tendon to start the season and pointed to the Bulls' early struggles without him.

He even made an emotional speech during the ring ceremony, thanking the fans in case it was the last time he had a chance to do so. "I knew it was the end of the journey, and I never saw it ending like that," Pippen said when reflecting on the ceremony where fans booed Krause.

The Last Dance detailed the Hall of Famer's path to being the underpaid superstar, which started when he was a child fighting through the adversity his family faced when his father suffered a stroke and his brother was paralyzed in a wrestling accident at school.

Pippen didn't even receive a scholarship at first at the University of Central Arkansas and had to work his way up the ranks from an equipment manager to the No. 5 overall pick of the 1987 NBA draft.

He was still fighting to establish his place as a rookie in the NBA, which was never more evident than when Charles Oakley slapped him while hazing and teasing the youngster. Pippen joked that even Jordan's gifted set of golf clubs was a way to lure him to the course to take his money.

Pippen wasn't the only one who had to overcome obstacles early in his career, as Jordan's battles through a broken foot in his second season and how they planted the seeds for his distrust of the front office were also featured in the second episode.

He was told there was a 90 percent chance he would be fine and 10 percent chance his career would end if he came back at the end of the season, and Reinsdorf and the rest of the front office did not want to risk his long-term health for a fleeting chance in the playoffs.

"Depends on how f--king bad the headache is," Jordan said when Reinsdorf suggested he wouldn't take a pill with a headache if nine would heal him and one would kill him.

The front office and coaching staff eventually reached an agreement Jordan would play just seven minutes per half, which only served to frustrate him more as the team was battling for the playoffs. Fortunately for Jordan, John Paxson hit a winning shot against the Indiana Pacers in a must-win game after he reached his 14-minute allotment.

That put the team in the playoffs and set up one of Jordan's most famous performances of all time—63 points against the loaded Boston Celtics. The fact that it came after Celtics guard Danny Ainge talked trash to him on the golf course the day before to give him additional motivation is vintage Jordan.

Those 63 points came in a loss, though, underscoring how he needed help to overcome the powerhouses in the league.

Enter Pippen, who Krause landed in a draft-day trade but then explored moving during the infamous and tension-filled last dance. Pippen responded by demanding a trade, something that didn't go through in that championship season and also set the stage for the third episode to come next Sunday.