To The Top

If these were the last days of the empire, if the musing from the owner's suite finally does what no opponent could and brings the dynasty down, then remember the Chicago Bulls the way they were last Friday night, when they won their fifth NBA championship. Remember the way Michael Jordan insisted that his faithful sidekick, Scottie Pippen, help him lift Jordan's fifth Finals MVP award. Remember Pippen standing near the edge of the court during the postgame celebration, holding a champagne bottle behind his back until Dennis Rodman—who everyone assumes will be cast out by the Bulls—walked by and then dousing the Worm in a gesture that was meant to tell him that for now, at least, he was still one of them. Remember how Jordan and coach Phil Jackson embraced for just a beat longer than you thought they would, clinging not just to each other but also to this moment, this team. And remember Jordan's words to the media. "We are entitled to defend what we have until we lose it," he said, after Chicago had defeated the Utah Jazz 90-86 at the United Center to wrap up the best-of-seven series in six games.

There are times when the financial books must be put aside in favor of the history books. If chairman Jerry Reinsdorf sets aside his notion of remaking the Bulls for the longer haul; if he re-signs Jackson and Jordan, whose contracts expire July 1; and if he resists the urge to trade Pippen, who can become a free agent after next season, the Bulls will have a chance to do what once seemed unthinkable: take a place beside the Boston Celtics of the 1950s and '60s as the two most imperial dynasties in NBA history.

Chicago has been so dominant since it won its first championship, in 1991, that its true competition is no longer its contemporaries. The Bulls' sustained success—five titles in the last seven years, including the last two in a row—puts them in competition only with those Celtics, who won 11 of 13 championships (including eight straight) from '57 to '69, and the Los Angeles Lakers of the Showtime era, who won five crowns in nine years, from '80 to '88. Chicago measures up well against both.

"Comparing teams from different eras is always an impossible thing to do," says James Worthy, a star forward on three of those Lakers championship teams and now an analyst for Fox Sports News. "All you can really do is compare how teams did in their periods, against the competition and under the conditions that were out there for them. If you do that, I think you would have to say that Chicago has dominated its time as much as any team the league has ever seen."

The Bulls have done so with less star power than either the old Celtics or Lakers. Boston counted on eight future Hall of Famers, led by center Bill Russell and including guards Bob Cousy, K.C. Jones, Sam Jones and Bill Sharman, forward Tom Heinsohn, sixth man Frank Ramsey and swingman John Havlicek. Los Angeles had center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who's in the Hall, guard Magic Johnson, who will be in the Hall, and Worthy, who should also be enshrined someday. Chicago has two certain Hall inductees in Jordan and Pippen, but the rest of the Bulls' lineup over the years, even with superb forwards Horace Grant and Rodman, has been remarkably nondescript for a dynasty.

"I think the Lakers came at you with more outstanding players," says Pat Riley, who was L.A.'s Showtime coach and is now the coach and president of the Miami Heat. "We had Byron Scott and Norm Nixon beside Magic in the backcourt, and we could come off the bench with people like Michael Cooper and Bob McAdoo and Mychal Thompson. The Bulls have role players who have done their jobs exceptionally well and the team has great chemistry, but I don't think Chicago has quite the firepower that those Lakers teams did."

That doesn't mean, however, that the three dynasties don't have similarities. They all revolved around one transcendent player whose passion to win matched his skills, a player who changed the game with his unique style. Russell proved that it was possible to dominate a game—and a league—with defense. The 6'9" Johnson was the first oversized point guard, the forerunner of the players who populate the league now, such as the Orlando Magic's Penny Hardaway and the Detroit Pistons' Grant Hill, who possess the height of forwards but the ball-handling and play-making abilities of guards. Jordan has proved to be an endlessly inventive and fierce performer, particularly when a championship is at stake.

As hard as it is to believe now, there was a time when Jordan was thought to be all style and no substance, that he would win scoring titles (he now has nine) but not NBA titles because he could not elevate the play of his teammates. That seems even more ludicrous in light of his brilliance during these Finals, especially his performance in Game 5 on June 11 in Salt Lake City, when he crawled out of his sickbed with a stomach virus to score 38 points and hit the decisive three-pointer in the Bulls' 90-88 victory (box).

The three dynasties have had different personae—the Celtics were coolly efficient, the Lakers exuded Hollywood flash, and the Bulls are the hip basketball equivalent of rock stars—but they have possessed a similar mystique, an aura that could defeat a lesser team before the game began. "All great teams have that," says Worthy. "When we stepped out on the court some nights, you could see it in some guys' eyes: 'Uh-oh, Showtime.' You see the same thing with the Bulls. Just their appearance on the floor makes some guys' eyes get wide, and when the Bulls see that, they know they have you beaten."

Moreover, as these dynasties evolved, the Celtics, Lakers and Bulls added to their opponents' frustration by doling out defeat even when they weren't playing well. That was the story of Chicago's 1997 postseason, and it held true in the decisive Game 6. The Bulls led for only 4:54 of the entire game, only to win with a fourth-quarter rally, which culminated in guard Steve Kerr's jumper with five seconds left that broke an 86-86 tie. "Dynasties get better as they get older," says Riley. "After a while they begin to win games not so much on talent as on the confidence that comes with experience. They succeed because they know they have succeeded in the past. If you don't develop that ability, you cannot be a team that becomes a repeat champion."