by The Last Dance on ESPN wrapped up last night and it was marvelous as usual. Now what the hell do we watch? I did watch KBO on Saturday night at 1am and intend to watch more of it as we go, but nothing this summer will be as good as The Last Dance. Let’s dive right in!
Michael Jordan is my all-time favorite player while Reggie Miller is in my second. I loved the Bulls with Jordan and I have loved the Pacers ever since they drafted Miller. I don’t even care that he retired a decade ago. They were two of the best competitors of the 90’s and the Miller vs Jordan matchup was must see every time!
Once the Bulls dynasty stopped, I firmly believed the Pacers would begin. Clearly, I was dead wrong, and the next era belonged to a mix of the Spurs and more so the Lakers. The Lakers took down the Pacers in six games in the 2000 NBA Finals and that was it.
Indiana has had some nice playoff pushes since but they were never again the team that took the Bulls to 7 in 98, the Knicks to 6 in 99 and the Laker to 6 in 00.
After Karl Malone won the MVP in 1997, and Bryan Russell talked crap to Jordan years before, did the Jazz have any chance in the 1997 NBA Finals? They were good and deserved to be there, but the outcome never seemed in doubt coming into that series. 98 was much different and we will get to that very shortly.
As for the pizza thing, what a great story that was. But c’mon, do you really believe that? I love Jordan, and I mean LOVE anything Michael Jordan, but that story is a crock of crap.
Various sources close to it have put it out there that it wasn’t the flu, it wasn’t food poisoning, but it was from partying that night. Why would the worlds most popular athlete order a pizza under his real name to a hotel when he didn’t have to give anything but his room number to the front desk?
Also, if 5 men really showed up at your hotel door, are you honestly going to eat the food they are dropping off to you? People get desperate for their favorite team to win, and in Utah the Jazz are the only thing going. How far will fans go, just go watch Celtic Pride. It was a hangover, plain and simple.
Now, to 1998, the Jazz were favored, and for good reason to! They were the better team in the regular season. They had more wins then the Bulls and they beat them every time they faced them in 1997-1998.
Despite what a good friend and associate of mine may say, they were not weak. The Utah Jazz of 1998 were damn good. Coming into the finals they has beaten the Lakers in 4, and the Spurs in 5.
Not only that, but Utah was a very tough place to win as the Jazz went 36-5 at home that season. The crowd was one of the best in sports. So much so that that Michael and his wife would not let the children travel to those games.
Speaking of which, it was nice to see his kids at least get 90 seconds of airtime. I don’t know, I guess in the end it doesn’t really matter, but it would have been nice to hear more from them and his ex-wife about what it was like being around MJ the parent and husband. One could argue that it isn’t relative to the total narrative of the story, but I would have liked it.
I had to fan boy out at least once last night however, as I clearly remember sitting in my parent’s basement in June of 98 and losing my mind when Dennis “Rodzilla” Rodman showed up on WCW Monday Night Nitro. He had appeared on WCW television with Hogan about a dozen times before that, but never smack dab in the middle of the NBA Finals. I’m so glad they didn’t shy away from that craziness.
Can you imagine something like that happening now in 2020? Never! But as we have seen and I clearly remember, things were very different back in those days. They were better, much better!
Jordan’s last sequence in game Six to win it was the perfect storybook ending. Score, steal, and score again to win it! If he was going to retire that was the perfect way to go out. This may also be why they never addressed his horrendous decision to come out of retirement one more time with the Washington Wizards.
So, the question remains, how much longer could it have gone on? I say at least one more year as they would have beaten the Spurs in 99. I firmly believe everyone would have come back for one more year if Phil Jackson stayed put.
Jackson leaves the Bulls after 98. They disband the team and finish the 99-strike shortened season 13-37 with Tim Floyd as the coach. Apart from role players Toni Kukoc, Bill Wennington and Ron Harper, it was a total gutting.
Perhaps the best way to look at is like this, apart from the MVP Derrick Rose led team of 2011, the Bulls have never once returned to the Eastern Conference Finals. That tells you all that you need to know.
As a 10 part series, it was amazing! I give it five of five stars. But again, I ask, now what?
