1998 Overview
From Hoopedia
1997-98 NBA Season
Michael Jordan’s long, brilliant career came down to an appropriate final sequence. In the last seconds of Game 6 of the NBA Finals, he stole the ball from Utah’s Karl Malone, then executed a one-on-one move on Bryon Russell at the other end.
The jumper Jordan launched from just left of the top of the key hangs there still in the photographs that captured the scene, 6.6 seconds on the clock, the rows of fans in Utah’s Delta Center waiting with faces transfixed, Jordan’s arms outstretched in a fundamentally exact follow-through.
The ensuing swish gave the Chicago Bulls their sixth championship and capped a career that included five league MVP Awards. The fifth of those had come that spring, with the legendary Bill Russell presenting the award to Jordan.
Russell said he had often been asked his opinion on the greatest player of all time. “I never thought about it,” he told Jordan. “But I’ll just say this about you. To play the game you were introduced to, I cannot imagine anyone playing it any better.”
This final season had brought Jordan his 10th scoring title, at 28.7 points per game, as well as his All-Star MVP recognition for the third time and his ninth appearance on the league’s All-Defensive First Team.
His ability was so great that it often seemed to obscure the rest of the league. But there was much afoot during the season. Larry Bird returned to the game as the coach of the Indiana Pacers and guided his veteran club into the Eastern Conference Finals against the Bulls. Driven by Reggie Miller’s fire, the Pacers pushed the Bulls through seven games before succumbing to Chicago’s home-court advantage.
“And we’d have beaten Utah, too,” Bird said, injecting a little trash talk into his final comments after the series.
Additional excitement in the Eastern Conference came from the rivalry between the Miami Heat and New York Knicks, which boiled over yet again during the playoffs. Game 4 of the Eastern Conference First Round featured Knicks Coach Jeff Van Gundy clutching Alonzo Mourning around the leg during a bench-clearing exchange. The subsequent suspension of Mourning cost the Heat dearly as the Knicks easily won Game 5 of the First Round series 98-81 on Miami’s home floor.
In the Western Conference, San Antonio experienced a resurgence, made possible by the addition of Rookie of the Year Tim Duncan, who formed a Twin Towers alignment alongside David Robinson. Duncan averaged 21.1 points and 11.9 rebounds per game.
Los Angeles center Shaquille O'Neal finished second in the scoring race with a 28.3 points per game average and his team topped the league with 105.5 points per game, but the Lakers fell in the playoffs for a second straight year to the graybeard Jazz. Malone and John Stockton worked their combo magic yet again to deliver 62 regular-season wins for Utah and a second straight run to the Finals.
In the end, though, all eyes were turned to Jordan and the Bulls in a season that Coach Phil Jackson appropriately dubbed “The Last Dance.”
With Scottie Pippen injured over the first two months of the season, the burden fell on Jordan, who responded by following Jackson's Zen philosophy of living and performing “in the moment.” Sometimes those moments were hard to handle, especially in light of the behavior of Jordan’s zany teammate, Dennis Rodman.
Yet under the stern leadership of Jackson and Jordan, the forward with the dyed hair won his seventh consecutive league rebounding title.
And when the Bulls welcomed Pippen back into the fold, they found yet another way to prosper. A huge part of that included Pippen’s defense in each playoff series, as he matched up against players as varied as Charlotte’s Glen Rice, Indiana’s Mark Jackson and Utah’s Greg Ostertag. Yet as the Finals wound to their conclusion, Pippen was slowed by a bad back and the burden fell squarely on Jordan.
He scored 45 points in the last game of his career, including the final brilliant sequence. “Things start to move very slowly and you start to see the court very well,” Jordan said afterward, explaining the last play. “You start reading what the defense is trying to do. And I saw that. I saw the moment.”
