Do you consider Jordans Bulls a Super Team?

[LakersLegacy]

Defense MVP DPOY 2 time Rodman champion that joined a champion
All NBA defender Pippen better defender than
DPOY Jordan
Best European player
Best Australian player
All-Star Harper
and shooters

[Doctor MJ]

I don’t think I consider the first 3 peat Bulls a super team, but the second definitely. That’s not to say Jordan didn’t have a talent advantage in the first 3 peat. What if Ewing had Drexler or Dominique instead of Starks in 92 and 93? Jordan probably has two less titles.

No, a super-team is one that brings in big stars rather than filling role player needs.

Those Bulls drafted Jordan, Pippen & Grant, and then they brought in Rodman in place of Grant. While Rodman is perceived nowadays as a star on a different level than Grant, this was mostly about how much attention Rodman got AFTER he came to the Bulls.

[bledredwine]

Defense MVP DPOY 2 time Rodman champion that joined a champion
All NBA defender Pippen better defender than
DPOY Jordan
Best European player
Best Australian player
All-Star Harper
and shooters

What? Ron Harper was never an allstar, nor should he have been.

You’re glorifying Rodman, as great of a defender and remarkable rebounder as he was, he sucked on offense. As many have pointed out, no one really wanted him. We needed his roles, because he was a great role player.

Jordan and Pipp were a wash, depending on the year, Jordan better for the first three peat and Pippen the second, but they were always close.

Best Australian player? Are you kidding me? Luc Longley was garbage.

That’s a great, well constructed team- debatably the greatest, but not a superteam. Having Steph Kd Klay or Wade Allen Bosh and Ray Allen is ridiculous, for example.

[walk with me]

Bron fans so desperate to rewrite history….

Check Pippen rookie and sophomore stats
Check what was being said about Rodman and Harper prior to getting to the bulls

Give me a break smh

[NZB2323]

Yes it was a super team. It’s all relative to the era.

Jordan was the only other superstar in the league who had a top 10 player as a teammate. None of the other stars had that.

Hakeem had Clyde for one ring but he wasn’t top 10.

David Robinson has Sean Elliot as his second banana LOL.

Patrick Ewing had no one close to top 10.

Barkley had Kevin Johnson not close to top 10.

Malone had Stockton who was borderline top 10 but wasn’t close to the player Pippen was.

Kemp and Payton had each other but neither was close to a top 10 guy.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Youre wildly underrating Stockton and Drexler and your "top 10" measure is pretty arbitrary.

Scottie Pippen was arguably the 5th best player in the league for most of the 90s.

1. Jordan
2. Hakeem
3. Robinson
4. Malone
5. Barkley

To me these are the only guys who were better than Pippen, and even 4 and 5 are arguable because of Pjppens defense.

No other star other than MJ had anything like that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You could certainly argue Shaq, Drexler, Stockton, and Ewing over Pippen.

Penny Hardaway was all-NBA 1st team in 95 and 96, and was 3rd in MVP voting in 96. Shaq had Penny and Horace Grant in 95 and 96. The Magic were 20-8 without Shaq in 96. Isiah Thomas had Dumars and Rodman for 90-93. Payton had Kemp, who finished 10th, 7th, and 8th in MVP voting from 93-97. Robinson had Duncan for 98-99. Hakeem had Drexler from 96-98, Barkley from 97-99, and Pippen in 99.

[NZB2323]

Defense MVP DPOY 2 time Rodman champion that joined a champion
All NBA defender Pippen better defender than
DPOY Jordan
Best European player
Best Australian player
All-Star Harper
and shooters

Wasn’t Detlef Schrempf the best European player? He made 3 all-star teams during the 90s. Kukoc never made an all-star team.

Best Australian player? Who was Longley’s competition for that?

The 2025 Bulls currently have the best Austrian player and the best Montenegrin player, and shooters.

Ron Harper never made an all-star team.

Harper and Kukoc were so good that they went 13-36 in 1999, were last in offensive efficiency, and last in NetRtg at -10.7.

[ScrantonBulls]

Bron fans so desperate to rewrite history….

Check Pippen rookie and sophomore stats
Check what was being said about Rodman and Harper prior to getting to the bulls

Give me a break smh

Ok, let's see.

- Rodman was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion.
- Harper just came off a season averaging 20 ppg.

Imagine adding a guy who was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion to be your THIRD best player. Got him for nothing.

Imagine adding a guy who just averaged 20 ppg as your FOURTH option on offense. Lol at describing these players as nobodies.

"How u gonna call deez bums a superteam? Smh man, LeBron James!"

[michaelm]

Bron fans so desperate to rewrite history….

Check Pippen rookie and sophomore stats
Check what was being said about Rodman and Harper prior to getting to the bulls

Give me a break smh

Ok, let's see.

- Rodman was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion.
- Harper just came off a season averaging 20 ppg.

Imagine adding a guy who was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion to be your THIRD best player. Got him for nothing.

Imagine adding a guy who just averaged 20 ppg as your FOURTH option on offense. Lol at describing these players as nobodies.

"How u gonna call deez bums a superteam? Smh man, LeBron James!"

Yes Jerry Krause knew how to build a team around Jordan. LeBron never imo showed any sign of knowing how to construct a team once he embarked on his career as LeGM. AD was a great fit, but I suspect that was accidental and he just picked the most elite player he could get as has been his wont. Of course the Cavs organisation during his initial tenure had no clue about constructing a team around him either.

If you want to call any great team a super team that is fine, but the quality of the Jordan Bulls teams wasn’t independent of Jordan, and that his teams were cohesive and other players thrived once he decided to play a more team game is a major mark of his greatness imo rather than a reason to detract from him as I have said to you a large number of times now.

[ScrantonBulls]

Bron fans so desperate to rewrite history….

Check Pippen rookie and sophomore stats
Check what was being said about Rodman and Harper prior to getting to the bulls

Give me a break smh

Ok, let's see.

- Rodman was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion.
- Harper just came off a season averaging 20 ppg.

Imagine adding a guy who was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion to be your THIRD best player. Got him for nothing.

Imagine adding a guy who just averaged 20 ppg as your FOURTH option on offense. Lol at describing these players as nobodies.

"How u gonna call deez bums a superteam? Smh man, LeBron James!"

Yes Jerry Krause knew how to build a team around Jordan. LeBron never imo showed any sign of knowing how to construct a team once he embarked on his career as LeGM. AD was a great fit, but I suspect that was accidental and he just picked the most elite player he could get as has been his wont. Of course the Cavs organisation during his initial tenure had no clue about constructing a team around him either.

If you want to call any great team a super team that is fine, but the quality of the Jordan Bulls teams wasn’t independent of Jordan, and that his teams were cohesive and other players thrived once he decided to play a more team game is a major mark of his greatness imo rather than a reason to detract from him as I have said to you a large number of times now.

Obviously. You take the best player off a team and they almost surely don't win it all. Many would fall apart, let alone winning 55 games (93-94 Bulls). That's just how stacked those teams were. And that was the first 3-peat squad. The 2nd 3-peat was even more loaded. Those teams had more talent 2 through 7 than any other teams, and it wasn't particularly close. Those were bonafide superteams.

[NZB2323]

Bron fans so desperate to rewrite history….

Check Pippen rookie and sophomore stats
Check what was being said about Rodman and Harper prior to getting to the bulls

Give me a break smh

Ok, let's see.

- Rodman was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion.
- Harper just came off a season averaging 20 ppg.

Imagine adding a guy who was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion to be your THIRD best player. Got him for nothing.

Imagine adding a guy who just averaged 20 ppg as your FOURTH option on offense. Lol at describing these players as nobodies.

"How u gonna call deez bums a superteam? Smh man, LeBron James!"

Ron Harper averaged 20 ppg on 49.6 TS%. He was a good defender, but never had a PER 15 or higher with the Bulls.

In 95 when Jordan only played in 17 games Harper averaged 6.9 ppg. In 98 when Pippen only played 44 games Harper averaged 9.3 ppg. In 99 when the Bulls didn’t have Jordan or Pippen, Harper averaged 11.2 ppg. In game 6 of the 98 Bulls finals, when Pippen was injured, Harper put up 8 points.

Harper was valuable to the Bulls as a defender, not as a supercharged 4th option on offense.

Rodman was certainly valuable to the Bulls as a defender and rebound, but he also had his issues and was past his prime. The Bulls had to go up against a better version of Rodman when he was on the Pistons, where he was arguably their 3rd best player.

[Wingy]

Bron fans so desperate to rewrite history….

Check Pippen rookie and sophomore stats
Check what was being said about Rodman and Harper prior to getting to the bulls

Give me a break smh

Applying the term “super team” to any pre-Heatles team is a history rewrite.

Of course there were always great teams before. But never did 3 top guys in their prime decide to join one team together until the Heat….and that’s when the term became commonplace.

Plenty of deniers though!

[Wingy]

Boston's Allen, KG, and PP team came before Miami.

No, that wasn’t player driven. Lebron/Wade/Bosh made the first “super team.”

Go read up on the control that KG had in dictating how that team was put together. It was 100% player driven.

Boston had to trade real assets to assemble their team. Here’s an article. I’m guessing you’ll say it’s wrong. KG saying yes, I’m ok to join Boston (which is what I remember from being in the moment as well) is nowhere even close to what Wade, Lebron and Bosh did.

https://www.si.com/nba/2015/07/27/boston-celtics-kevin-garnett-danny-ainge-ray-allen-paul-pierce-trade

[lessthanjake]

Bron fans so desperate to rewrite history….

Check Pippen rookie and sophomore stats
Check what was being said about Rodman and Harper prior to getting to the bulls

Give me a break smh

Ok, let's see.

- Rodman was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion.
- Harper just came off a season averaging 20 ppg.

Imagine adding a guy who was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion to be your THIRD best player. Got him for nothing.

Imagine adding a guy who just averaged 20 ppg as your FOURTH option on offense. Lol at describing these players as nobodies.

"How u gonna call deez bums a superteam? Smh man, LeBron James!"

A few things:

1. RAPM tells us Rodman wasn’t particularly good on the Bulls. For instance, NBArapm has 2-year RAPM for 1997 and 1998, and Rodman is ranked 111th in the NBA, with a +0.3. The Bulls averaged winning at just above a 66-win pace in the many games Rodman missed in those years, while they averaged winning at just below a 68-win pace overall in those years. So much not much of a difference. He was good to have in the sense that any slightly positive player is likely better than the alternative, but he was not a big needle-mover in reality. We can also see this from the fact that he washed out of the league soon after leaving the Bulls and had his minutes significantly reduced and/or was pulled from the starting lineup in the 1997 and 1998 playoffs. Of course, this shouldn’t really be a surprise. Rodman was actually quite old on the Bulls. As with essentially every player ever, Rodman had been a lot better in his earlier years than he was in his mid-30s. When you combine his reputation from those years with how well the Bulls did, that explains the awards recognition. He really wasn’t particularly good though. A positive player, sure, but not a big needle mover.

2. Harper scored 20 PPG the year before he joined the Bulls because he was on a terrible team that had the highest pace in the league and had at most one other person who could score at all (Danny Manning and then ancient Dominique Wilkins after the trade swapping them, with the combination of those two guys also missing a bunch of games). Someone had to take shots, and Ron Harper did it to the tune of a terrible -95.4 TS Add. Scoring on a tanking team is not indicative of actually being a capable scorer. He was not a capable scorer on the Bulls. This is such an odd argument for you to make, since anyone who watched the NBA back then knows this. Harper actually was a notably positive role player for the Bulls, but it was because of his defense, not his scoring. I’m perplexed why you’re focusing on scoring. It’s just not even the right angle to take even for the conclusion you want to get to.

Ok, let's see.

- Rodman was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion.
- Harper just came off a season averaging 20 ppg.

Imagine adding a guy who was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion to be your THIRD best player. Got him for nothing.

Imagine adding a guy who just averaged 20 ppg as your FOURTH option on offense. Lol at describing these players as nobodies.

"How u gonna call deez bums a superteam? Smh man, LeBron James!"

Yes Jerry Krause knew how to build a team around Jordan. LeBron never imo showed any sign of knowing how to construct a team once he embarked on his career as LeGM. AD was a great fit, but I suspect that was accidental and he just picked the most elite player he could get as has been his wont. Of course the Cavs organisation during his initial tenure had no clue about constructing a team around him either.

If you want to call any great team a super team that is fine, but the quality of the Jordan Bulls teams wasn’t independent of Jordan, and that his teams were cohesive and other players thrived once he decided to play a more team game is a major mark of his greatness imo rather than a reason to detract from him as I have said to you a large number of times now.

Obviously. You take the best player off a team and they almost surely don't win it all. Many would fall apart, let alone winning 55 games (93-94 Bulls). That's just how stacked those teams were. And that was the first 3-peat squad. The 2nd 3-peat was even more loaded. Those teams had more talent 2 through 7 than any other teams, and it wasn't particularly close. Those were bonafide superteams.

And see this is where it starts to become clear you didn’t watch the NBA back then. You describe the 1994 Bulls as “the first 3-peat squad” and say the second-three-peat squad was even more loaded. It’s such an odd statement to make because the 1994 Bulls were as close to the second-three-peat squad as they were to the first-three-peat squad. Indeed, they added Kukoc, Kerr, Longley, and Wennington. All of those were significant rotation pieces on the second-three-peat Bulls (and Kukoc was probably the third-best player on the second-three-peat team). And they were very clearly a major reason the 1994 Bulls did as well as they did! I’ve done analysis for you using the minutes of those guys as well as their RAPM/BPM numbers in their career compared to the RAPM/BPM numbers of the 1993 guys whose minutes they replaced. And despite making some unfavorable assumptions, that analysis suggested that those players added about +5.4 SRS to the 1994 Bulls (without which, we’d expect them to have won like 30-35 games).

In a sense, the 1994 Bulls may well have been the best of all worlds. And that’s because they had Kukoc/Kerr/Longley/Wennington, which constituted a big upgrade to the supporting cast, but meanwhile they still had Horace Grant, who was definitely better than Bulls Rodman. Kukoc probably improved at least a bit in later years, but Pippen was better in 1994 than he was in 1996-1998, so that probably just evens out. The 1994 Bulls had BJ Armstrong instead of Ron Harper, and Harper was probably a little better than Armstrong, and Longley didn’t play many minutes in 1994, so those are pluses for the second-three-peat squad over the 1994 squad. Meanwhile, though, Scott Williams was definitely better than Dickey Simpkins, so that’s a plus for the 1994 team. So yeah, overall, the 1994 Bulls were actually probably the best the Bulls ever were. It was almost entirely the best of all worlds, where they got peak Pippen and peak Grant (who was much better than Bulls Rodman), but also had a combination of almost all the best role players the Bulls had across both three-peats (with the only exception being not having Harper, and instead having BJ Armstrong at his best, which was probably a little less good). There’s essentially no argument that any Jordan Bulls supporting cast was as good as that 1994 team, except maybe the 72-win GOAT 1996 team (and even that is dubious and requires thinking Harper was substantially better than 1994 Armstrong).

[MavsDirk41]

Yes it was a super team. It’s all relative to the era.

Jordan was the only other superstar in the league who had a top 10 player as a teammate. None of the other stars had that.

Hakeem had Clyde for one ring but he wasn’t top 10.

David Robinson has Sean Elliot as his second banana LOL.

Patrick Ewing had no one close to top 10.

Barkley had Kevin Johnson not close to top 10.

Malone had Stockton who was borderline top 10 but wasn’t close to the player Pippen was.

Kemp and Payton had each other but neither was close to a top 10 guy.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Youre wildly underrating Stockton and Drexler and your "top 10" measure is pretty arbitrary.

Scottie Pippen was arguably the 5th best player in the league for most of the 90s.

1. Jordan
2. Hakeem
3. Robinson
4. Malone
5. Barkley

To me these are the only guys who were better than Pippen, and even 4 and 5 are arguable because of Pjppens defense.

No other star other than MJ had anything like that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Pippen should not be ranked ahead of Drexler…..

You are also underestimating those other teams….

Magic, Worthy, Divac, Scott, and Perkins
Drexler, Porter, Kersey, Buck Williams, Cliff Robinson
Barkley, KJ, Thunder Dan
Malone, Stockton, Hornacek
Payton, Kemp, Detlef, Hawkins, Perkins

I also dont see Shaq or Ewing on this list….they should also be ranked ahead of Pippen

[MavsDirk41]

Its hilarious that the same Lebron James fans keep bringing up Ron Harper averaging 20 points per game for the Clippers the season before the Bulls when he:

Scored those 20 points on 17.8 field goal attempts per game on 42% from the field, 30% from 3, and 71% from the free throw line with a TS of 49%. And he averaged over 3 turnovers per game. But man oh man Jordan got to play with Ron Harper who was obviously past his prime.

[lessthanjake]

Youre wildly underrating Stockton and Drexler and your "top 10" measure is pretty arbitrary.

Scottie Pippen was arguably the 5th best player in the league for most of the 90s.

1. Jordan
2. Hakeem
3. Robinson
4. Malone
5. Barkley

To me these are the only guys who were better than Pippen, and even 4 and 5 are arguable because of Pjppens defense.

No other star other than MJ had anything like that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You could certainly argue Shaq, Drexler, Stockton, and Ewing over Pippen.

Penny Hardaway was all-NBA 1st team in 95 and 96, and was 3rd in MVP voting in 96. Shaq had Penny and Horace Grant in 95 and 96. The Magic were 20-8 without Shaq in 96. Isiah Thomas had Dumars and Rodman for 90-93. Payton had Kemp, who finished 10th, 7th, and 8th in MVP voting from 93-97. Robinson had Duncan for 98-99. Hakeem had Drexler from 96-98, Barkley from 97-99, and Pippen in 99.

Jordan, Hakeem, Robinson, Malone, and Barkley were definitely better than Pippen. Shaq was definitely better than Pippen too, though he wasn’t in the league for the whole decade. After that, Pippen was in a tier with several other guys like Ewing, Drexler, Stockton, and Payton. And, in any given year, there were always some other guys in that same tier too, who just didn’t stay there throughout the decade for one reason or another. This includes guys like Penny Hardaway, Shawn Kemp, Tim Hardaway, Kevin Johnson, and Grant Hill. And, of course, if we’re talking about the very beginning of the 1990s, Magic Johnson was unquestionably far better than Pippen ever was, and even Larry Bird and Isiah Thomas were up there in that second tier. And if we are talking the very end of the Jordan Bulls, Tim Duncan was better than Pippen. Even Reggie Miller was arguably better than Pippen, at least when it comes to the playoffs.

The end result is that Pippen was basically typically somewhere near the bottom of the top 10 in any given year.

Other stars did have something similar. Malone and Stockton played together. Hakeem and Drexler played together, and they had Barkley too for a year where they were still in their primes. Shaq and Penny played together. Barkley and Kevin Johnson played together. Payton and Kemp played together. Robinson and Duncan played together for a year before the Jordan Bulls were done. With the exception of Hakeem/Drexler, none of those teams won the title in a year Jordan was in the NBA. They all had great teams. But they tended to lose to each other and/or the Bulls.

I do also want to note that Pippen may have been a bit of a triangle merchant. His impact fell off quite a lot the moment he left the Bulls, and it ramped up a lot when the triangle was put in place. Some of that is just natural process of aging, but it was abrupt enough on both ends that it seems likely the triangle significantly improved Pippen’s impact—which makes a lot of sense if you think about his strengths and weaknesses on offense. And that actually makes his success as a #2 pretty contingent on Jordan. Because if Pippen played with another superstar, he probably wouldn’t have ended up in the triangle, because those other players would’ve been optimized in a different system and/or strongly preferred to play in a different system. So if a different superstar had Pippen, you’d probably end up having regarded him as nowhere near the player he was on the Bulls, because he wouldn’t have been optimized in the same way.

[michaelm]

Bron fans so desperate to rewrite history….

Check Pippen rookie and sophomore stats
Check what was being said about Rodman and Harper prior to getting to the bulls

Give me a break smh

Ok, let's see.

- Rodman was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion.
- Harper just came off a season averaging 20 ppg.

Imagine adding a guy who was All-NBA 3rd team, All-defensive 1st team, and the rebounding champion to be your THIRD best player. Got him for nothing.

Imagine adding a guy who just averaged 20 ppg as your FOURTH option on offense. Lol at describing these players as nobodies.

"How u gonna call deez bums a superteam? Smh man, LeBron James!"

A few things:

1. RAPM tells us Rodman wasn’t particularly good on the Bulls. For instance, NBArapm has 2-year RAPM for 1997 and 1998, and Rodman is ranked 111th in the NBA, with a +0.3. The Bulls averaged winning at just above a 66-win pace in the many games Rodman missed in those years, while they averaged winning at just below a 68-win pace overall in those years. So much not much of a difference. He was good to have in the sense that any slightly positive player is likely better than the alternative, but he was not a big needle-mover in reality. We can also see this from the fact that he washed out of the league soon after leaving the Bulls and had his minutes significantly reduced and/or was pulled from the starting lineup in the 1997 and 1998 playoffs. Of course, this shouldn’t really be a surprise. Rodman was actually quite old on the Bulls. As with essentially every player ever, Rodman had been a lot better in his earlier years than he was in his mid-30s. When you combine his reputation from those years with how well the Bulls did, that explains the awards recognition. He really wasn’t particularly good though. A positive player, sure, but not a big needle mover.

2. Harper scored 20 PPG the year before he joined the Bulls because he was on a terrible team that had the highest pace in the league and had at most one other person who could score at all (Danny Manning and then ancient Dominique Wilkins after the trade swapping them, with the combination of those two guys also missing a bunch of games). Someone had to take shots, and Ron Harper did it to the tune of a terrible -95.4 TS Add. Scoring on a tanking team is not indicative of actually being a capable scorer. He was not a capable scorer on the Bulls. This is such an odd argument for you to make, since anyone who watched the NBA back then knows this. Harper actually was a notably positive role player for the Bulls, but it was because of his defense, not his scoring. I’m perplexed why you’re focusing on scoring. It’s just not even the right angle to take even for the conclusion you want to get to.

Yes Jerry Krause knew how to build a team around Jordan. LeBron never imo showed any sign of knowing how to construct a team once he embarked on his career as LeGM. AD was a great fit, but I suspect that was accidental and he just picked the most elite player he could get as has been his wont. Of course the Cavs organisation during his initial tenure had no clue about constructing a team around him either.

If you want to call any great team a super team that is fine, but the quality of the Jordan Bulls teams wasn’t independent of Jordan, and that his teams were cohesive and other players thrived once he decided to play a more team game is a major mark of his greatness imo rather than a reason to detract from him as I have said to you a large number of times now.

Obviously. You take the best player off a team and they almost surely don't win it all. Many would fall apart, let alone winning 55 games (93-94 Bulls). That's just how stacked those teams were. And that was the first 3-peat squad. The 2nd 3-peat was even more loaded. Those teams had more talent 2 through 7 than any other teams, and it wasn't particularly close. Those were bonafide superteams.

And see this is where it starts to become clear you didn’t watch the NBA back then. You describe the 1994 Bulls as “the first 3-peat squad” and say the second-three-peat squad was even more loaded. It’s such an odd statement to make because the 1994 Bulls were as close to the second-three-peat squad as they were to the first-three-peat squad. Indeed, they added Kukoc, Kerr, Longley, and Wennington. All of those were significant rotation pieces on the second-three-peat Bulls (and Kukoc was probably the third-best player on the second-three-peat team). And they were very clearly a major reason the 1994 Bulls did as well as they did! I’ve done analysis for you using the minutes of those guys as well as their RAPM/BPM numbers in their career compared to the RAPM/BPM numbers of the 1993 guys whose minutes they replaced. And despite making some unfavorable assumptions, that analysis suggested that those players added about +5.4 SRS to the 1994 Bulls (without which, we’d expect them to have won like 30-35 games).

In a sense, the 1994 Bulls may well have been the best of all worlds. And that’s because they had Kukoc/Kerr/Longley/Wennington, which constituted a big upgrade to the supporting cast, but meanwhile they still had Horace Grant, who was definitely better than Bulls Rodman. Kukoc probably improved at least a bit in later years, but Pippen was better in 1994 than he was in 1996-1998, so that probably just evens out. The 1994 Bulls had BJ Armstrong instead of Ron Harper, and Harper was probably a little better than Armstrong, and Longley didn’t play many minutes in 1994, so those are pluses for the second-three-peat squad over the 1994 squad. Meanwhile, though, Scott Williams was definitely better than Dickey Simpkins, so that’s a plus for the 1994 team. So yeah, overall, the 1994 Bulls were actually probably the best the Bulls ever were. It was almost entirely the best of all worlds, where they got peak Pippen and peak Grant (who was much better than Bulls Rodman), but also had a combination of almost all the best role players the Bulls had across both three-peats (with the only exception being not having Harper, and instead having BJ Armstrong at his best, which was probably a little less good). There’s essentially no argument that any Jordan Bulls supporting cast was as good as that 1994 team, except maybe the 72-win GOAT 1996 team (and even that is dubious and requires thinking Harper was substantially better than 1994 Armstrong).

It has been very obvious for quite a while that Scranton Bulls had no contemporary experience of the Jordan Bulls and just looks for/cherry picks statistics which he imagines support his pre-determined argument.

[michaelm]

Bron fans so desperate to rewrite history….

Check Pippen rookie and sophomore stats
Check what was being said about Rodman and Harper prior to getting to the bulls

Give me a break smh

Applying the term “super team” to any pre-Heatles team is a history rewrite.

Of course there were always great teams before. But never did 3 top guys in their prime decide to join one team together until the Heat….and that’s when the term became commonplace.

Plenty of deniers though!

Exactly. The Heatles had 4 future HOF players anyway, as he argues in regard to the Jordan Bulls, counting LeBron which is hardly a bold assumption, and while Ray Allen was 37 when the Heat won the 2013 title Rodman was 37 for the last title of the second threepeat and had spent his career banging with centers.

[ReasonablySober]

No, that wasn’t player driven. Lebron/Wade/Bosh made the first “super team.”

Go read up on the control that KG had in dictating how that team was put together. It was 100% player driven.

Boston had to trade real assets to assemble their team. Here’s an article. I’m guessing you’ll say it’s wrong. KG saying yes, I’m ok to join Boston (which is what I remember from being in the moment as well) is nowhere even close to what Wade, Lebron and Bosh did.

https://www.si.com/nba/2015/07/27/boston-celtics-kevin-garnett-danny-ainge-ray-allen-paul-pierce-trade

Who cares what they gave up? The whole trade doesn't happen if KG doesn't orchestrate it so he can play with Pierce and Ray Allen.

[MrTribbiani]

Definitely.

Those teams were super teams and were dynasties between 1991-1993 and 1996-1998.

It amazes me that some Jordan fans act like that wasn't the case.