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Steve Kerr explains why Warriors turned down a documentary similar to ‘The Last Dance’ on their 2018-19 season

Opportunities for documentaries like “The Last Dance” are rare. They require an acknowledgment that the story that is being told is nearing its end. Jerry Krause made that possible for the Bulls by ensuring that Phil Jackson, and by extension Michael Jordan, would not return for the 1998-99 season. But this era’s greatest dynasty had no such assurances. 

When the NBA approached the Golden State Warriors for a similar documentary, they said no. Why? As Steve Kerr explained to Sam Amick of The Athletic, they didn’t want or expect their run to end so abruptly. 

“You think about our situation with the Warriors, and we didn’t have a final season,” Kerr said. “We’re trying to keep this thing going. A lot of our players are still here, and we’re trying to rev it back up, so there was no sense of finality. If anything, we’re trying to avoid that.

“So having everybody in, inviting the world in and inviting cameras in and saying, ‘Hey, we want to capture the final days of this run,’ it’s like you’re basically telling your players that you believe this is ending, and also you’re violating a principle of the sanctity of the locker room. So it never occurred to me, nor does it now, to do anything of the sort for our team.”

Although the NBA world might have expected Kevin Durant to leave the Warriors after the 2018-19 season, that was an inevitability the Warriors refused to accept. In what appeared to be a message of acquiescence, they even suspended Draymond Green for a game after a confrontation between him and Durant that happened during a game. 

The Bulls showed no such favoritism towards their biggest names. Krause was so set on moving on from Jackson that he was willing to let him go even if the Bulls had gone 82-0 in Chicago’s final season. While he publicly welcomed Jordan back, Jordan had made it clear that he would play only for Jackson. 

That was the primary difference between the two declining dynasties. In one case, a key figure wanted the dynasty to end, and the others recognized that they couldn’t stop it, so there was little harm in providing access to a team that would not exist anymore afterward. In the other, the key figures all acknowledged the possibility that things could end, but refused to accept it as an inevitability. 

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