Revisionist History: the ‘98 Chicago Bulls, and Beyond — NBA 2K18 MyLeague (PS4)
Knowing the 1997–98 NBA season would be the Dynasty Bulls’ “Last Dance,” we replay that epic season on NBA 2K18… and take on the post-dynasty future.
Most special thanks to Operation Sports user MJWizards for his time and dedication in creating accurate 1997–98 NBA rosters, as well as EZMadden and Justin 1555 for their draft classes allowing this to go farther.
I will always deeply love the 1997–98 NBA champion Chicago Bulls.
Sure, the team everyone remembers best is the 1995–96 squad, the one that went 72–10 in the regular season and introduced the Larry O’Brien trophy to the Bulls’ new home on 1901 W Madison Street. I was a little too young to remember that group; that wouldn’t be the case two seasons later.
It was well-established the 1997–98 NBA season would be the last for head coach Phil Jackson and superstars Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, at least on the Chicago Bulls payroll. Reserve forward Jud Buechler stated in the Unforgettabulls documentary that Jackson’s binder hand-outs to begin the season were titled “The Last Dance,” leaving little room for doubt.
Despite losing Pippen for 38 games early in the season and hovering at .500, the Bulls found their rhythm in late November and never looked back, posting a 62–20 record for best in the NBA.
In the playoffs, the Bulls swept the New Jersey Nets in three games before defeating the Charlotte Hornets in five, setting the stage for a dramatic series against Reggie Miller and the Indiana Pacers. Larry Bird would prove to be a worthy adversary to Jordan yet again — this time, as a head coach — and force the Bulls to a deciding seventh game, which the Bulls won at home.
The Bulls would face the defending Western Conference champion Utah Jazz in a rematch of the 1997 NBA Finals, which the Bulls won in six games. Their encore would play our similarly with the Bulls winning their third straight title, this one highlighted by Jordan’s clinching basket in Game 6, now affectionately known among basketball fans as “The Shot.”
With six titles in eight years rounding out arguably the greatest dynasty in NBA history, and an uncertain future for the league as a collective bargaining dispute between owners and players threatened a work stoppage, the 1997–98 season would indeed be the last of the Dynasty Bulls as we knew them.
In attempting to sway Phil Jackson to return for one more season whenever basketball resumed in 1999 — the logic being that if the Zen Master returned, so would Jordan — general manager Jerry Krause hired Iowa State Cyclones head coach Tim Floyd as a contingency plan. Jackson was not moved, and instead opted for a short-lived retirement.
Jackson was merely the first domino to fall. Jordan announced his second retirement on January 13, 1999. One week later, as the collective bargaining dispute cooled and an abbreviated season was set to begin, Krause traded Pippen to the Houston Rockets for Roy Rogers and a second round draft pick. Elite rebounder Dennis Rodman, now 37, was also disinterested in playing in a rebuild and elected free agency.
The 62-win, NBA champion Chicago Bulls had lost Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, leaving just Toni Kukoc and Ron Harper with the additions of Tim Floyd and rental Brent Barry. It went as well as you’d think.
In the shortened 50-game 1999 season, the Bulls finished a dreadful 13–37, dead last in the Eastern Conference and ahead of only the Vancouver Grizzlies and Los Angeles Clippers for worst record in the league. Despite making a quality selection with the first pick in the 1999 draft (Elton Brand), the Bulls would stay mired in failure for the next half-decade, going 119–341 under coaches Floyd and Bill Cartwright through 2004.
What if Jerry Krause handled the offseason, and the Bulls’ future, differently?
I’ve found myself asking this a lot over the years. Yes, losing Jackson, Jordan and Pippen is a hell of a thing for one offseason, and assume already the 1999 season would be as woeful as it was. Ride things out with Kukoc, draft Elton Brand and sign a few key role player free agents, and you’ve got an eighth seed in the East, at least.
The Bulls were never going to be the Bulls again, but they certainly could have tried different things instead of settling for a .259 winning percentage across five seasons; it’s not like they ended up benefiting tremendously from tanking those years anyway.
We’re going to rewrite the Bulls’ history, in 1997–98 and the years that followed, in this debut edition of Revisionist History, a new series I’m going to do thanks to the beautiful customization options of the NBA 2K franchise.
Thanks to the hard work of community members, it only takes a few hours to completely customize an NBA 2K18 “MyLeague” to mimic a season in history, and with an accurate 1997–98 roster now available for download along with team branding to make everything visually authentic, we’re going to do that.
NBA 2K18 offers limitless possibilities in the kind of history that can be rewritten or experimented with, and with more vintage rosters coming in the future, there will be more of these series. It just made sense to start with the first NBA team to capture my heart.
I only have one rule with these Bulls: no matter what the game does, Jackson, Jordan and Pippen will not be re-signed for 1998–99.
Otherwise, the future will look a lot different in this universe; for example, players we lost too soon like Drazen Petrovic, Benji Wilson and Hank Gathers (among others) will be available, and many more greats from Europe will be included. Both decisions were made to deepen the free agent pool with real players and not “John Smith” or “David Miller.” All will be accurately scaled, to the best of my guessing, to how they would look/play in 1997–98.
My plans for teams are different, too. I’ll follow real life situations (Lakers and Clippers moving into the Staples Center in 1999 is an example) but may respond to them differently. Maybe Seattle approves its expansion proposal of Key Arena in 2005 to keep the Sonics, among others. I’m planning to keep the Grizzlies in Vancouver, as well.
The elephant in the room is the 30th team. In 1997, there were 29 active NBA franchises. There are 30 today, and in a custom MyLeague, you cannot remove a team from the game. So, we’re stuck.
I essentially made the 30th team the Oklahoma City Thunder, but plan to render them virtually useless in the first few seasons of play. My goal is to “expand” the league to its 30th team in 2002–03, and it’ll be the Thunder. Unless, of course, someone has a better idea…
I’m very enthusiastic about this project, and I hope you are too. It’s amazing, the kind of fiction we can write in the 21st Century.
Chapters (UPDATED 11/16)
“The Last Dance” (1997–98 Season)
*1998 Postseason In Progress*
