The Last Dance: Dennis Rodman’s wild Las Vegas bender brought to light

A scantily clad Carmen Electra didn’t expect to see Michael Jordan at her door during a wild getaway with his Bulls teammate Dennis Rodman.

Dennis Rodman is a character as colourful as they come and the stories told about the NBA icon during his final season with the Chicago Bulls definitely don’t disappoint.

The tattooed, pierced friend of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un was an enigmatic defensive beast who could dominate the best players in the league one day and get ejected the next.

Sometimes Rodman just needed to escape the fishbowl existence that came with being an NBA megastar and so it was during the Bulls’ 1997/98 championship-winning season where they completed their second three-peat of the decade to claim a sixth title.

Michael Jordan was leading the way and with his partner in crime Scottie Pippen out injured for the first 35 games that year, Rodman stepped up to cement his status as vital cog in the Chicago machine.

In that season, the subject of hugely popular docu-series The Last Dance released on Netflix last week, Rodman became the go-to man alongside Jordan during Pippen’s absence but when he returned from injury, Rodman lost his way.

Feeling undervalued and lacking the same purpose he had when Pippen was out, Rodman asked coach Phil Jackson in January for a mid-season holiday.

Say what you want Dennis Rodman invented load management 😂😂😂😂😂

— Donovan Mitchell (@spidadmitchell) April 27, 2020

Jackson agreed to give Rodman 48 hours, but Jordan knew that was never going to work.

“I say, ‘Look Phil, let me tell you something man, if anybody needs a f***ing vacation, I need a vacation’,” Jordan says in The Last Dance.

“We look at Dennis and say, ‘Dennis, what are you going to do?’ He says, ‘Well, I need to go to Vegas’.

“(I say) ‘Phil, you let this dude go on vacation, we’re not going to see him. You let him go to Vegas, we’re definitely not going to see him’.

“I’m looking at Phil like, ‘You ain’t going to get that dude back in 48 hours, I don’t care what you say’.”

His Airness was right.

Rodman set sail for Las Vegas, hitting nightclubs and partying with his entourage and then-girlfriend, actress Carmen Electra, who starred in hit TV show Baywatch.

One day passed, then two, then three, then four. Rodman had officially gone AWOL, doing his best work on the dance floor instead of the basketball court.

“It was on, the party was started right away,” Electra, who later divorced Rodman after a short marriage, says in The Last Dance.

“It was definitely an occupational hazard being Dennis’ girlfriend. He was wild.”

The Baywatch Babe and The Worm. Picture: Albert Ferreira/australscope

What a pair. (Photo by SGranitz/WireImage)

Rodman returned from Vegas to Chicago but still didn’t turn up for any team activities, continuing his holiday. So as Jordan did so often during his career, he took matters into his own hands and hauled Rodman’s “a** out of bed”, out of his apartment and back where he belonged.

Rodman lived across the street from the Bulls’ home stadium, the United Centre, so Jordan and the team’s athletic trainer paid him a visit.

The Last Dance director Jason Hehir told ESPN: “Michael said off camera he grabbed him by his nose ring and took him out.”

Jordan declined to say “what was in his bed” when he confronted Rodman, but Electra – unaware of the Bulls’ schedule or that Rodman was on leave without permission – gave a pretty suggestive hint as she recalled seeing the GOAT at her door one morning.

“There’s a knock on the door, it’s Michael Jordan, and I hid,” Electra says. “I didn’t want him to see me like that so I’m hiding behind the couch with covers over me.”

Fortunately for Chicago, the bender was just what Rodman needed and he returned to help drive the Bulls to their sixth championship in eight seasons.

we the people demand the vegas bonus footage#TheLastDance

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) April 27, 2020

Episodes three and four of The Last Dance will be available on Netflix today