Near the very end of The Last Dance, among the final moments of the final episode of the docuseries, Michael Jordan stares down the camera and tells us how much it tears him up inside that his Chicago Bulls never got the chance to go for championship number seven. For a series that told so many incredible tales, not only from Jordan’s life and career but also those of his teammates and coach, that big hypothetical What If was about the only stone they had to left to turn over... could the dynasty have continued?

The Last Dance’s title comes from the contemporary tag that Phil Jackson used after being told this’d be his final season in charge. No new contract... he’d barely even gotten that final one-year deal prior to the season (refer to episode one). In the wake of winning a third-straight title, Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf did offer Jackson another year if he wanted it (going into bat for him against GM Jerry Krause who had fallen out with Jackson – through fault on both sides it oughta be said since the doco is rather ruthless towards Krause) but Jackson declined it and chose to take some time away from the sport instead. As we well know he was destined to return soon enough with the Los Angeles Lakers to win five more championships over eleven more years (with a season off in the middle). But that’s another story.

Without Jackson things sorta fell apart for the Bulls. Jordan suggests in the doco that he’d have loved to come back for one last swing but the team was committed to rebuilding and Jackson didn’t want to be a part of that and eventually Jordan chose not to be either. But the doco doesn’t put a lot of context behind that idea. Jordan may have been the reigning MVP but he was also 36 years old and would be 37 by the time the following season eventually started because of a labour-dispute lockout. A lockout which meant the season didn’t start until mid-February and only lasted 50 games instead of 82. Whether or not he’d already made up his mind well before this, Jordan only actually announced his retirement in January 1999... six months after the previous finals.

The lockout kept everything in stasis for those six months so it wasn’t until two days after Jordan’s retirement that Tim Floyd was hired to be the new head coach. A week after that free agency could finally begin and Dennis Rodman was out the door. Meanwhile Scottie Pippen, who had been the subject of trade discussions during the previous season, a season that he missed the start of after delaying his offseason surgery and in which he openly feuded with management and himself demanded a trade after hearing that Jerry Krause was exploring the possibility, was also hitting free agency and was flipped in a sign-and-trade to the Houston Rockets. He signed a five-year deal in which he earned more in the first year than he had in his last four seasons with the Bulls combined... ya boy got paid eventually, don’t worry about it. But he didn’t get on with Charles Barkley (who’d had to take a pay cut so they could afford him) and would be traded again after only one season in Houston. Four lucrative years in Portland later and he made his way back to Chicago on an overpaid two year deal (during which he only played 23 games) to end his career.

With Jordan retired, Jackson walking away, and Pippen and Rodman preferring what the open market had to offer them... gone were the four main architects of the second three-peat. Crucial role players Steve Kerr and Luc Longley were also traded away and the Bulls were thus back to square one. They’d go 13-37 that season. Toni Kukoc led them in scoring while Kerr won his fourth title in a row with the San Antonio Spurs. Then Jackson won the next three as coach of the Lakers (Ron Harper being a role player on the first two).

So that’s what happened. Could they have won another one? Mate, they might have been able to win another two or three if all we had to think about was their talent. Jordan was still at the top of the sport, Pippen would go on to be pretty excellent for the Blazers in his time there thus showing he had enough left in the tank. And the lockout delay would have been brilliant for refreshing them all physically after the toll of going all the way three times in a row like that. Jackson obviously won plenty more as a coach so no dramas there. They didn’t need to trade Kerr or Longley. Dennis Rodman was more of an issue as his career didn’t last long after he left the Bulls, after stunted and contentious spells with the Lakers and Mavericks he went into retirement and pro wrestling and eventually global diplomacy (the Rodman focussed episode was the best of the lot of them, what a dude). He was in his late-30s by then, nearly two years older than Jordan, and motivation was always a factor with him. Maybe staying at the Bulls could have helped him keep going, maybe not. Maybe they could have found someone else to offer what he did on the court.

Who bloody knows. The fact is that the dynasty ended there for reasons which we’re still debating two decades later but reasons which were pretty valid despite the villainising of Jerry Krause. As badly as it may (or may not) have been handled, this remained a salary capped league and somebody would have had to sacrifice some significant dollars to keep even just Pippen around. Look throughout all the great modern basketball teams and one of the recurring themes is that there are no great teams in which everybody was paid what they were worth.

Nah that Chicago Bulls team ended when they were supposed to end. They went out on top. No stuttering slow demise, no spiralling descent, no implosion of egos. It’s a poetic fantasy to want to go out on top but honestly very few manage it and the indignity of carrying on a few years beyond where you should have is far more common than the alternative. Because athletes and coaches are competitive. That’s why they got to where they did and you could see the genuine burn in MJ’s eyes as he ended that doco pondering what might have been if they’d only put it all aside and had one more swing. But, like, what did you expect him to say? He’s Michael Jordan. He’s the most competitive man who ever lived. Many things were made clear in The Last Dance and Jordan’s determination to win and win and win and win and win and win was one of the most constant themes.

Yet you only have to look as far as his own sad comeback a few years later with the Washington Wizards to see what happens when you push back against fate. Phil Jackson had his own moment like that when he tried to pull strings in the front office for his old buddies at the New York Knicks after his coaching career ended. It’s one of the greatest aspects of that 90s Bulls mythology specifically that they didn’t come back for that seventh title. That we never got to see them fail... not with a fully fit Michael Jordan anyway. With the stuff about Jackson’s job security, with Jordan saying he never wanted to play for another coach, with Pippen and Rodman’s contracts, with Jerry Krause’s burned relationships with basically all of those fellas, not to mention the lockout that followed... the 1997-98 season marked a perfect finale.

Drift Away - Uncle Kracker pic.twitter.com/oeMdlyFXDo
— Michael Jordan Jamming Out (@JordanJamming) May 19, 2020

And you know how it goes, Andre 3000 said it best (as he tends to do). Nothing is for sure, nothing is for certain, nothing lasts forever. The Bulls were going to wrap it up one way or another and this version of the story is better than most, certainly better than seeing them try to figure it out one last time after the point when they’d already reached what felt like a natural conclusion. After all, the very next season saw the San Antonio Spurs win the championship under the guise of a bloke called Gregg Popovich and a second-year forward named Tim Duncan, who’d win Finals MVP. A year later Phil Jackson’s Lakers won with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant leading the way. Which eventually leads us directly into LeBron James’ Cavs/Heat/Cavs and the Steve Kerr-coached Golden State Warriors.

So it goes. There’s been a lot of retrospective debates about Michael Jordan and beyond because of this doco, ranging from the mildly curious to the mind-numbingly stupid, and it’s not hard to see that plenty of that was deliberate on MJ’s part. Entire Hall of Fame careers have begun and ended in the time since Jordan’s Bulls and old mate clearly felt it was about time to reassert his greatness to a whole new generation or two. And of course he wasn’t going to be able to resist putting that little teaser out at the end, the big What If. But there are What Ifs throughout The Last Dance, from uncalled fouls to injuries to general antics or whatever else. Ultimately things end up the way they end up and that’s enough.

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