Most notable among those was getting past the Pistons, but they also had to conquer a Lakers team accustomed to winning titles (but not used to doing it without Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). The Bulls had to surmount mental hurdles to at last win a championship with Jordan on their side. The team with the best record in the league, the Trail Blazers, proved not ready for the spotlight and fell easily to the Lakers in the Western Conference finals. Detroit’s Bad Boys were showing wear and won only 50 games. This was not a strong year for the NBA overall, still absorbing the expansion by four teams in the previous three years. NBA Finals: Defeated Los Angeles Lakers, 4-1.Rebounding leader: Horace Grant, 8.4 rpg (20th in NBA).Scoring leader: Michael Jordan, 31.5 ppg (First in NBA).Average scoring: 110.0 (Seventh in NBA).He earned 80 of a possible 96 first-place votes for MVP, 93.8 percent of a perfect score.Ĭartwright missed 18 games because of injury but was back for a strong run in the playoffs, when he averaged 28 minutes, including a challenging matchup with Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing in which Ewing shot 8-of-19 from the field in the decisive game. It was an acknowledgment that, indeed, even he could not believe he’d gotten so good. This was the year of Jordan’s famous shrug, a gesture during Game 1 of the Finals series with the Blazers that underscored not only a moment, but an era. NBA Finals: Defeated Portland Trail Blazers, 4-2.Rebounding leader: Horace Grant, 10.0 rpg (14th in NBA).Scoring leader: Michael Jordan, 30.1 ppg (First in NBA).Starting lineup: PG Michael Jordan, SG John Paxson, SF Scottie Pippen, PF Horace Grant, C Bill Cartwright.They opened the season with a 12-game winning streak, an amazing feat given this was a team that knew very well the championship was not going to be won in November. He ranked third on the team in shots and scoring and second in assists, behind Pippen. Toni Kukoc’s versatility off the bench continued to escalate. Jordan and Pippen ranked among the top 20 in the league in minutes, even though each already had four championship rings. Rebounding leader: Dennis Rodman, 16.1 rpg (First in NBA)Īlthough there is no question the 1996 team was superior, coming back a year later and nearly matching that performance might was, at its essence, even more impressive.Scoring leader: Michael Jordan, 29.6 ppg (First in NBA).Of the 15 postseason victories necessary to claim the NBA title, 10 came by double-digit margins. They won 14 of their first 15 games in the playoffs, and the loss to the Knicks came in overtime. This was the fourth Bulls championship, earned in the first full season after Michael Jordan returned from his mid-90s “retirement.” They had winning streaks of 13 and 18 games and only once lost consecutive games, to the Nuggets and Suns on an early February trip West. They won 86.7 percent of all games they played, a ridiculous percentage that places them among the most dominant teams in any major U.S. So this group of Bulls stands as not only the best Bulls team of the Jordan era but the greatest team of all time. There was a moment a few years back when it appeared this team’s supremacy would be usurped, but the 73-win Golden State Warriors lost the 2016 NBA Finals to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. NBA Finals: Defeated Seattle Sonics, 4-2. All-Stars: Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen.Rebounding leader: Dennis Rodman, 14.9 rpg (First in NBA).Scoring leader: Michael Jordan, 30.4 ppg (First in NBA).Starting lineup: PG Michael Jordan, SG Ron Harper, SF Scottie Pippen, PF Dennis Rodman, C Luc Longley.MORE: Ranking Michael Jordan's championship teammates 1. Since Jordan played for all of them - and played great for all of them - deciding among the six teams is not so easy: Sporting News decided to rank the relative strength of those six NBA titlists, whose banners still hang proudly at the United Center and whose memory has inspired one of the highest-rated sports documentaries ever to air on U.S. Which one of those teams, though, was the best? With the final episodes of ESPN’s “The Last Dance” set to air Sunday evening, it probably is not offering any spoilers to remember the Chicago Bulls won six NBA championships with Michael Jordan as their superstar during the 1990s.
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