No. 1 Chicago Bulls

You wonder if those other enduring heroes of the entertainment world, the Rolling Stones, will sound like the Bulls when they decide they are embarking on their last blockbuster tour: tired, aching and swearing that wild horses couldn't drag them back to the Chicago stage again.

Certainly the Bulls were hitting some of those Stones-like notes at the start of what appears to be their final act. Though coach Phil Jackson amended the "wild horses" comment he made at Chicago's media day, his point was clear. He's not coming back after this year, and we can blame that on owner Jerry Reinsdorf's and general manager Jerry Krause's hearts of stone. And if Jackson leaves, Michael Jordan says the Bulls can say goodbye to their beast of burden too. Scottie Pippen, meanwhile, can't get no satisfaction: He is in the final year of a contract that pays him a relative pittance of $2.7 million a year, and the Bulls have made it clear through vigorous trade attempts that they have no intention of rewarding his decade of hard work and good soldiering with a big contract.

Where will that leave the Bulls' dynasty next summer? Shattered.

As for this year, the 1997 NBA champions are still together—Jackson, Jordan and Dennis Rodman each extracted fat one-year contracts from a reluctant Krause—but they aren't necessarily intact. The Bulls' list of woes is lengthy, beginning with the toxic relationship brewing between management and the team it seems intent on dismantling to prove Krause's statement that "players and coaches don't win championships, organizations do." Then there are the team's acute physical problems. After undergoing soft-tissue surgery on the left foot he injured in the Eastern Conference finals. Pippen is expected to be out until at least mid-December. His absence will hurt the Bulls in the short run (Pippen hasn't missed more than 10 games in any of his previous 10 seasons), and it may seriously jeopardize their shot at home court advantage in the playoffs. "Scottie is so important to us," says Jackson, "it's hard to imagine us being able to win a whole lot of games without him."

On the bright side, sixth man Toni Kukoc, who played only 57 games last year, because of his own foot problems, seems to have put his ailments behind him despite his relatively brief off-season, a period that he says felt like "a long weekend."

There's still concern about the physical state of Rodman, who had a subpar postseason after spraining his left medial collateral ligament in a March game against the Mavericks. His desire might also be in question—until two weeks ago he was not sure whether he even wanted to continue playing. Ron Harper, meanwhile, is nursing the two fragile knees that have plagued him for years. "I'm hurting, I'm tired," says Harper. "I don't think we'll be blasting out of the gate this year. But you don't win NBA championships in the first two weeks of the season."

Backup guard Steve Kerr agrees, noting that everyone on the team could have used a little more rest. "It wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for Scottie to miss two months," he says. "It would give him some rest and give people like Scott Burrell and Jud Buechler some minutes and [ultimately] give us a stronger bench."

Burrell, a four-year veteran who came to Chicago from Golden State in the Dickey Simpkins trade in September, performed well defensively in the preseason, but he was having difficulty getting comfortable with the Bulls' triangle offense. However, he wants no part of any talk about his replacing Pippen. Says Burrell, "Pippen is one of the best ever to play the game. I can never do the things he did or can do."

Will the one man who is capable of carrying Pippen's load—which amounted to 20.2 points, 6.5 rebounds and 5.7 assists per game last year—take it upon himself to do so in his quest for a sixth title? Keeping the 34-year-old Jordan fresh may be Jackson's biggest challenge this fall. "Someone else is going to have to fill it up," says Jackson. "If Michael has to take up [the slack], it's going to put a lot of pressure on him."

Jordan says the team's focus will be on getting healthy, not on securing home court advantage come playoff time. "Nothing is guaranteed by having home court advantage," he says. "Personally, I'm pretty sure that when the playoffs come, I'll be ready."