1998 NBA Championship

Lore & Background

Michael Jordan was voted the NBA Finals MVP of the series (he also had won the award the last five times the Bulls won the Finals: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, and 1997). This would be his sixth NBA championship and sixth Finals MVP award in six full basketball seasons. This would be his final season of winning the NBA championship and Finals MVP. Until 2021 this would be the last finals not to feature a team from California, Florida, or Texas.

The 1998 Finals garnered the highest Nielsen TV ratings in NBA history at 18.7, and even surpassed the Nielsen ratings for the 1998 World Series, marking the first time the NBA had a higher rating in its championship round than of Major League Baseball's championship round. The Bulls headed into the series as the underdogs. Bulls' small forward Scottie Pippen stated, 'It's a different feeling. We’ve never been in this situation where we’ve sort of been written off.

It’s a great feeling being the underdog because you want to go out now and prove everybody wrong.' As of , this is Chicago's most recent championship and Finals appearance, and they currently hold the longest Finals appearance drought of the Central Division teams.

Reader's Guide

In Game 3, the Jazz set the record for the 42 point loss in Finals history and were hammered by the media for the score, as well as the lowest number of points scored in any NBA game (since eclipsed by a score of 49 from the Bulls on April 10, 1999) since the inception of the shot clock. Every player on the Bulls roster scored at least once, with the Bulls' last-remaining scoreless player, backup center Bill Wennington, nailing his bucket with only 5.2 seconds remaining in the game.