By TTT subscriber Nishal Sodha.
Heyókȟa – also spelled “haokah,” “heyokha” or “heyoka” – is a kind of sacred clown in the culture of the Lakota people of the Great Plains of North America. The heyoka is a contrarian, jester, and satirist, who speaks, moves and reacts in an opposite fashion to the people around them. (Wikipedia)
I have been spending the last few days watching ‘The Last Dance’, a Netflix / ESPN television documentary miniseries that first aired on 19 April. Episode 4 is the latest in a 10 episode season, and it is as gripping a documentary on a sports team as you can imagine. The impact is magnified multiple times over in this period of unprecedented uncertainty, as the world grapples with what the future looks like, and football fans (well, Liverpool fans really) look for something to cling on to whilst we await the fate of our team and the season as a whole.
The Last Dance is about the Chicago Bulls team: a basketball franchise that won six NBA championship titles in eight years, repeating the ‘3 peat’: ’91, ’92, ’93, ’96, ’97 and ’98. The names of the trio of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman roll off any fan’s tongue, as do Horace Grant, Steve Kerr, Toni Kukoc and John Paxton: players fashioned into an incredible team by legendary coach Phil Jackson.
In many ways, it has already enthralled me as did ‘Fire in Babylon’, a similar team documentary about the legendary West Indian cricket team under Sir Viv Richards and Sir Clive Lloyd. They went undefeated for 15 years (1980 – 1995), a dominance yet to be replicated by any sporting team, in any discipline anywhere in the world!
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