In the absence of live sports, ESPN’s Michael Jordan documentary “The Last Dance” was pretty much all that sports fans in the United States and around the world had to talk about for the past two months. The 10-part series aired by ESPN (and streamed by Netflix outside the U.S.) over a span of five Sundays turned out to be a huge success, breathing new life into the dormant genre of sports documentaries.
And while Michael Jordan certainly is one-of-a-kind, both in terms of his on-court achievements and his rise to a cultural icon, all with the added salt of several off-court controversies, the U.S. sporting landscape has several other larger-than-life personas whose stories could be re-told. According to a recent Morning Consult poll, Muhammed Ali, Babe Ruth and Kobe Bryant are on top of that list, with 49, 48 and 45 percent of U.S. adults saying they’d be interested in a documentary about their lives/careers.
The following chart shows the eight athletes Americans would be most interested in learning more about, with Serena Williams the only female athlete making the list.
