LeBron James, ESPN reportedly closing in on his own version of ‘The Last Dance’

Michael Jordan sat on nearly two decades of footage from his final season with the Chicago Bulls before he ever agreed to let anyone touch it. When he finally did, in June 2016, it happened to be the same day LeBron James was parading down the streets of downtown Cleveland, hoisting the Cavaliers’ championship trophy through a canyon of confetti and wine-and-gold jerseys.

Producer Mike Tollin has called the coincidence exactly that.

“The universe has such a funny sense of humor,” he said of the moment he turned on ESPN to see James parading past while Jordan, hours later, told him to go make The Last Dance.

Nine years later, James is reportedly getting his own version of it.

Marc Stein reported earlier this week that a documentary tracking James’s final NBA seasons is already taking shape, built on footage from Andy Thompson, the same NBA Entertainment producer and principal videographer behind The Last Dance. Thompson, according to Stein, has been a regular presence around James’s games dating back to at least the 2022-23 season.

In Stein’s telling, the format might go further than a standard behind-the-scenes treatment, with the project conceivably streaming pieces of James’s final seasons live as they actually happen, rather than just looking back on them after the fact. He also floated a theory for why James signed for so little in the first place. At two years and roughly $8 million, the 76ers deal barely clears the veteran minimum, a fraction of what a four-time MVP has commanded for two decades. The documentary payout, he suggested, is what makes up the difference.

Andrew Marchand of The Athletic followed with the ESPN-specific piece, reporting that James and the network are now closing in on an actual agreement. Marchand’s sources, granted anonymity because nothing is finalized, described the talks as being at the “one-yard line.” The expectation is that a camera crew will document James’s time in Philadelphia, the team he signed with this month and the one expected to be the final home of his career, while also pulling from earlier footage that NBA crews have shot since his rookie season, including material that’s never been shown publicly.

Back in 2023, Lakers radio voice John Ireland told Awful Announcing that Andy Thompson had been spending significant time around James’s games that season.

“Andy is stockpiling that just so he has it and has the opportunity to tell the story,” Ireland said at the time, adding that Thompson was “already working on, potentially, a story about the end of LeBron’s run like he had one for the end of Jordan’s run.”

The cameras, in other words, were rolling well before anyone knew LeBron would land in Philadelphia, and long before ESPN entered the picture at all.

James has called joining the 76ers his final decision and said he expects to finish his career there. Whether that ending gets the full Last Dance treatment now comes down to how ESPN and James close out a deal that, by Marchand’s account, is nearly done.