‘Last Dance’ leaves us with ‘maddening’ Michael Jordan, Bulls question
Could the Bulls have won seven championships? Or eight?
After Michael Jordan and the Bulls won their sixth and final title in 1998, Chicago GM Jerry Krause dismantled the entire team. Jordan retired, head coach Phil Jackson left the team, Scottie Pippen was traded and Dennis Rodman was released.
It was a flurry of moves that was expected for months, as Jordan hinted at retiring all season and Krause told Jackson he wouldn’t be coming back. But in the closing minutes of ESPN’s “The Last Dance,” Jordan suggested that while the team’s higher-ups had made up their minds on rebuilding, they could have orchestrated another title run if they really wanted to.
Much of the docuseries touches on the turmoil and clashing of egos that took place behind the scenes of that ’98 season, and Krause was the root of a lot of the drama. Jackson said he left at the conclusion of that season because he felt like his time had come, but Jordan put the blame for his departure on Krause.
“In ’98, Krause already said at the beginning of the season that Phil could go 82-0 and he was never going to be the coach,” Jordan said. “So when Phil said it was the last dance, we knew it was going to be the last dance.
“Now, they could have nixed all of that at the beginning of ’98. Why say that at the beginning of ’98?”
Another reason Jackson left was because he didn’t want to coach a bad team. Chicago jettisoned every other piece they had left over from the dynasty (Steve Kerr, Pippen, Rodman), and owner Jerry Reinsdorf explained it would have been “suicidal” to bring everybody back.
“Their market value individually was going to be too high,” Reinsdorf said. “They weren’t going to be worth the money they were going to get in the market. … I had no doubt that Krause would have built another championship team in a couple of years, but it wasn’t going to happen instantly.”
Jordan saw it differently. He believed that everyone would have taken a smaller deal to chase a seventh ring.
“If you asked all the guys who would have won in ’98, Steve Kerr, Jud Buechler,” he said. “We gave you a one-year contract to try for the seventh. Do you think they would have signed it? Yes, they would have signed it.
“Would I have signed for one year? Yes, I would have signed for one year. I had been signing one-year contracts up to then. Would Phil have done it? Yes.”
He admitted Pippen might have needed some “convincing,” but if Jordan, Jackson and Rodman were all on board, he believed Pippen would have eventually come around.
Instead, Jordan retired for a second time. He returned to play for the Wizards in 2001, but left for good after two uneventful seasons.
He is still considered by many to be the greatest of all time, but he may have held an even firmer grasp on that title if not for the fracturing inside the Bulls organization.
“It was maddening because I felt like we could have won seven,” Jordan said. “I really believe that. We may not have, but man, not being able to try, that’s something that I just can’t accept.”