Quote:
Originally Posted by electricladylnd
If you don't think MJ has excellent talent around him if what to tell you, especially after he came back. Pippen, great hof plsyer, rodman hof, Harper was a 20/5/5 guy be for joining the Bulls, Kukoc, Kerr was a good shooter, even luc longley wasnt bad, he was a big body, knew where to be on the floor and could hit a decent shot.
No one is arguing he didn't have an excellent team - one man teams don't make the finals, much less win. I'm only arguing that he did not always clearly have the best team.
Let's take their last couple teams, which is when the Jordan narrative was in full effect.
Guards: Stockton/Hornacek/Anderson vs Jordan/Kerr/Harper - kind of hard to compare Jordan vs Stockton as they are completely different players. Both are easily in the discussion for the best ever at their position. Hornacek and Kerr are basically the same player. By this point in his career, Harper and Anderson is not a significant difference.
Forwards: Pippen/Rodman/Kukoc vs Malone/Russell/Foster - Pippen/Malone gets the same answer as Jordan/Stockton - I think you can make a decent argument here that the Bulls get a clear edge. The difference is that Malone/Russell are playing significantly more minutes, so the inclusion of Foster isn't quite the dagger it should be. Rodman was nothing special in either of the finals vs the Jazz, averaging about 8 rpg and contributing nothing in terms of points, while Malone (who would have been his most likely player to defend) was going for 25/10 both years (w/45% and 50% shooting), so his defense was not so overwhelming.
Centers: Longley vs Ostertag - nothing significant here in terms of difference. Neither was a key win/loss factor.
Were the Bulls better? Maybe. I wouldn't say they were clearly better and certainly it's plausible to believe this Jazz lineup could beat this Bulls lineup on paper.
edit: did a bit more research and the Bulls were believed to be clear underdogs in 98:
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/03/sp...ng-possum.html
Last edited by Punker; 06-14-2017 at 09:39 AM.