The Last Dance drew strong reviews and viewership around its debut last night, but it also saw one notable anachronism pointed out. In a portion of the documentary covering the Bulls’ run to the playoffs in 1986, a list of the NBA standings featured the “Wizards” in sixth. But Washington didn’t become the Wizards until 1997; they were the Bullets in 1986. And that led to a number of people pointing out the error on Twitter. NBC Sports Washington’s Prince J. Grimes got a statement from ESPN that this was in fact just an error rather than a conscious choice to avoid the Bullets name, and that it will be fixed in future airings:
Some fans speculated this was purposefully done by ESPN in an attempt to be politically correct in a social climate where the name “Bullets” is no longer deemed acceptable. In a statement to NBC Sports Washington, ESPN said the error was simply a mistake.
“This was an error on the graphic,” an ESPN spokesperson said, adding that it “will be fixed in future re-airs.”
There are some edits made after the fact for content reasons, but this doesn’t appear to be one. But it is an interesting miss. And while a mistake like that doesn’t devalue the documentary much, it is one of those things that can draw some attention, like Uncut Gems‘ ESPN-TNT mixup. And it’s more proof that many sports fans are out there watching content pretty closely.
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.