In the summer of 1998, Michael Jordan won his last NBA championship with the Bulls. After six months, I left the team entirely. That famous Game 6 turned out to be their last game against them. In the words of Donna Summer, Chicago had walked away from them, briefly leaving baseball, five years ago, and this time Chicago knew it was true. On what would have been his 59th birthday, we look back at Jordan’s career, which transformed him from basketball star to cultural celebrity and changed what it meant to be an athlete.
It’s been 26 years since Jordan last inspired the Bulls to win another championship. One last look at the transcendent triptych—Jordan, the Bulls, the ring—that he, and perhaps they, will forever be synonymous with.
Looking back at those uncertain years, if you traced the same span of time from that day forward, you would be in a world where Star Wars had not yet been heard of, where the seeds of the apple were just sprouting, where the Supremes were about to come together, and where Charlie… Chaplin is still alive.
How else could Jordan have consciously decoupled himself from the Bulls? Of course, the first marriage ended the same way in ’93, with the team winning their third consecutive championship and the “three-peat,” the sixth time in eight years that they were recognized as the best in basketball. of the team, these two lost years when his air decided to trade the basketball for a home run.
When he returned to them in 1995, it wasn’t for another encore but for another cash-in from Quentin, the Queen of Live Aid. Although they ultimately lost to the Orlando Magic in the Eastern Conference semifinals in the months following their return, they would go on to win three more championships in three consecutive seasons under head coach Phil Jackson, taking Seattle away. Seattle’s scalp, and back-to-back — back, Karl Malone’s Utah Jazz.
But when Jordan left the game in 1999 – regardless of his brief stint with the Washington Wizards in the early 2000s – what really mattered wasn’t the ring, but the overall impact on the sport, Chicago, America and the world. , has become hard.
In the decade prior to their arrival, the Bulls had made the playoffs just twice and had yet to win a championship in their history. In fact, the last time a Windy City team made it to the Finals was in the final years before the Basketball Association of America (BAA) merged with the National Basketball League (NBL) to form the National Basketball Association. NBA) we all know and love today. In 1947, the now-defunct Bucks were defeated 4-1 by the Philadelphia Braves. Chicago didn’t know it at the time, but it would now have to wait four and a half years before it would happen again.
Between 1991 and 1998, Jordan, Jackson and the Bulls won an astonishing six NBA championships in eight years, something that has not been replicated in the modern era. You have to go all the way back to Bill Russell, Red Auerbach and the Boston Celtics. In the two decades since his second departure, the closest the Bulls have come to another championship was in 2011, when they cracked the Eastern Conference under MVP Derrick Rose and head coach Tom Thibodeau. Finals, but lost to the Miami Heat 4-1.
As a 21-year-old NCAA champion All-American college basketball star, Jordan became the highest-paid player in Chicago Bulls history as the third overall pick in 1984. Within a few years, he was bringing more than 400,000 new fans to Chicago’s stadium each season. The venue’s replacement venue, the United Center, opened in 1994 and was nicknamed “The House Jordan Built.” In the early nineties, the Jordan Brand was said to be worth $1 billion to the region’s economy. It is said that the first “three consecutive championships” alone brought in $280 million in local revenue.
In 1984, the Bulls franchise was worth $18.7 million. The next year, Jordan won the Rookie of the Year award, which was worth $105 million. A Chicago Tribune article published shortly after three Finals victories in 1993 estimated that Jordan’s direct impact on the team and the city meant the Bulls themselves were worth $1 billion.
Today it is worth $3 billion.
The article calculated that if Bulls fans themselves had raised the $4.5 million paid to young Jordan in his first five-year contract, those backers would have seen a return on investment of more than 22,000% less than ten years later. .
When dynasties were established, we often rely on hearsay, veneration passed down from generation to generation, and excellent biographies and documents. Jordan’s history is an obvious example. We hear that Juan Manuel Fangio is the greatest racing driver of all time. We hear that Alfredo Di Stefano was the greatest European football player of the 20th century. We heard Babe Ruth pointing to where he was going to hit the ball out of the park.
But Jordan was already noticeable before he turned pro, and once he entered the NBA, he was watched virtually every step of the way and became a global phenomenon, a cultural behemoth like never before.
Imagine, imagine, a career-destroying college injury that has derailed so many potential superstars.
Jordan, who wore Converse while playing for the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, turned pro and wanted to join Adidas, but ended up signing a five-year contract with Nike with a base salary of $500,000 per year (a sum that Three times the price of any other NBA sneaker deal). In the mid-1980s, Nike was still a minor fish in the market – Adidas’ revenue was 50% higher than that of Adidas, while Converse was the most famous NBA star “Magic” Johnson, Larry Bird and Julius Erving. preferred brand.
The fact that Jordan’s first Nike shoe was banned by the NBA for not meeting the league’s color standards only provided unprecedented exposure and set the machine in motion. The first Air Jordan sneakers hit the market the following year and generated sales of more than $100 million in the first 12 months.
As the 1990s progressed into the new millennium, Galaxy superstars such as Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Zion Williamson and Luka Doncic all joined the unparalleled Nike pavilion established by Jordan. In 2019, Forbes reported that Nike’s share of the performance basketball market was 86% (primarily due to the Jordan Brand). It’s a much bigger part of the basketball lifestyle, a staggering 96 percent, frankly. In the 2019-20 season, 77% of NBA players wore Nike or Jordan shoes, and the top nine shoes were all produced by Nike. Jordan himself earned about $130 million from Nike as a result, four times as much as LeBron James, the highest-paid active player.
As of 2020, it was estimated that the nearly four-year partnership with Nike had earned Michael Jordan $1.3 billion.
Nike’s Jordan brand is worth more than $10 billion.
That final game on June 14, 1998, has become the iconic Game 6. There are 5.2 seconds left in the game. The Bulls trailed the Jazz 85-86. 20 feet. Two o’clock. The last game Michael Jordan won for Chicago. 87–86. Winning the championship for the sixth time. Second three consecutive championships.
Jordan scored 45 points in the entire game. Perfect players indeed make for a perfect ending to a perfect story.
Michael Jordan was a freak, an outlier, but he fundamentally and irrevocably changed who he was as an athlete, forever completely blurring the lines between sports and culture. His magnanimity certainly had an heir, but the throne was still occupied.
Of course, and arguably most importantly, without Jordan, we’d probably be talking about Shaquille O’Neal, the guy who got Bugs Bunny sucked into the golf hole.