1998 Bulls vs. 1999 Spurs

[mysticOscar]

Hard to say. Cant really gauge much from the '98 Spurs because of the vast improvement they showed in '99.

Would have been an epic series, but I always thought that '99 Spurs < '00 Lakers < '98 Bulls

Not much of a gap between the 3, but if I was a betting man that would be my order

[SportsGuru08]

The biggest factor, given Jordan's age in the late '90s, is that the Spurs backcourt doesn't have anyone who can make him work on defense. Jaren Jackson and Mario Elie were good defenders and floor spacers but neither could create their own shot consistently.

So with that, Jordan can basically be a rover on defense and do a lot of double teaming down low, which would negate the Spurs only major advantage.

[Djoker]

The backcourt of the Spurs was quite weak indeed. I'm not sure if they could generate enough offense against a very strong Bulls' defense. I think the 1998 Bulls would win in 6 or 7 games but the 1999 Bulls if they did come back to try a fourpeat would likely lose in 6 games. Rodman just wasn't healthy/motivated after 1998.

[VanWest82]

The backcourt of the Spurs was quite weak indeed. I'm not sure if they could generate enough offense against a very strong Bulls' defense. I think the 1998 Bulls would win in 6 or 7 games but the 1999 Bulls if they did come back to try a fourpeat would likely lose in 6 games. Rodman just wasn't healthy/motivated after 1998.

Rodman wasn't healthy or motivated in 98 either outside of the first three weeks in Jan. Outside of that, I agree with your conclusion.

98 Bulls > 99 Spurs
99 Spurs > 99 Bulls (MJ and Scottie another year older going for four...idk)

[wickywack]

The Bulls and Spurs played twice in the 98 season. The second game was pretty fun:

Watch on YouTube

Longley was injured, and the Bulls more or less didn't bother playing a center. Rodman and Kukoc vs Duncan and Robinson upfront, all playing high minutes. Position-less basketball vs what would soon become one the best classic front courts in NBA history.

The Spurs actually started 3 "centers" (Robinson, Duncan, and Perdue) a bunch of games that season. But not this one.

[ronnymac2]

Bulls take it, brother. All this revisionist history about Dennis Rodman being unmotivated and injured. This is the same guy who helped Jordan and the Bulls annihilate Utah in the NBA Finals - to the tune of the largest MOV in NBA Finals history, IIRC - then flew to Detroit the night after for WCW Monday Nitro to hang out with Hollywood Hulk Hogan and the NWO. The guy was firing on all cylinders at that point.

How does SAS get the ball up the floor reliably with 5'11" midget Avery Johnson being the only ball-handler against CHI's long trap defenders in Harper, Jordan, Pippen, and Brown?

CHI's wing rebounders give the Bulls an edge on the glass. Contrary to what one may think, the 1999 Spurs were an average rebounding team on both ends, even with outstanding rebounders like Duncan and Robinson. CHI was extremely strong on the glass in 1998.

So if CHI wins REB% and TOV%, SAS needs to really decimate them in TS%, especially eFG%. Well, if anybody can do it, it is the Spurs. They were amazing at defensive eFG%, and Chicago sucked at actually making baskets in 1998. The Spurs have the greatest defensive big man tandem ever manning the paint and making sure MJ and Pip can't just slash into the paint in the halfcourt.

It'd be an interesting matchup for sure. The main question mark for me is this: Can Chicago's defense slow SAS's eFG% enough? My answer to that is likely yes. I don't think they slow the spry young lion in pre-injury Duncan, but they have the long defenders to make sure Jackson, Elie, and Elliott don't pop off from 3-point range or get in a rhythm with jump shots. I do see the Bulls taking a close series.

[lessthanjake]

The thing with the 1999 Spurs is that their main claim to greatness is losing so few playoff games in 1999 specifically, and that is a weaker accomplishment than it looks at first glance. In terms of regular season performance, they won at a 60.7 win pace with a 7.12 SRS. That’s certainly great, but are both slightly below what the 1998 Bulls did even with Pippen only playing half the season. And that version of the Spurs team didn’t win a title or make the Finals again until the roster was substantially revamped and Duncan was in his peak years. So the argument for being a better team would really be focused on their playoff dominance in 1999 specifically. And, at first glance, it’s not a bad argument, since they only lost 2 playoff games! But we should remember that they had a pretty easy playoff run—only playing one team that had even a 2.70+ SRS. Given who they played, the only truly impressive thing in the playoff run IMO was sweeping the Blazers. That was a 5.67 SRS team. But even then, the 1999 Blazers were somewhat obviously the quintessential team that gets a good regular season SRS but has nothing close to a superstar player and therefore ends up being a bit of a paper tiger in the playoffs. (The Blazers were better the next year but they’d added Scottie Pippen and Steve Smith at that point, so were a materially stronger team—albeit still one without a major superstar). So, basically, the bottom line is that I don’t really think the 1999 Spurs playoff run is as impressive as their record in that playoff run looks at first glance. Indeed, by my calculations of playoff SRS, despite losing more games, the 1998 Bulls had a higher playoff SRS (11.34) than the 1999 Spurs did (9.58). Meanwhile, their regular season record was really good but less impressive than the 1998 Bulls, and that version of the Spurs didn’t have any other great playoff run that could really validate the 1999 team’s playoff dominance, while obviously the 1998 Bulls did have that.

So I’m inclined to think the 1998 Bulls would win, because they just seem to me to have been the better team. Wouldn’t be particularly easy, though IMO. And I do think it depends a bit on what injury/health environment we are talking about. Pippen wasn’t in good shape during the Finals in 1998, so if we assume Pippen is in that kind of condition against the Spurs, then I can definitely see the Spurs having a good shot. But I think that’s a bit of an unfair assumption to make, for a few reasons, including (1) Pippen injured his back during the Finals against the Jazz, and in our counterfactual world he’d be playing the Spurs in the Finals instead so that specific back injury would not have occurred; and (2) it is not exactly fair to compare the health situation of a team after a full season with the health situation of a team after a substantially shortened season, since we’d generally expect the shortened-season team to have fewer issues just by virtue of having played fewer games. I think in an environment that doesn’t give one team a shorter season than the other or assume injuries to Bulls players in games that the hypothetical is assuming never happened, then I’d go with the Bulls. If we make some unfairly charitable assumptions in the Spurs’ favor, then it starts to become a tougher call.

[homecourtloss]

Would be an interesting series, but I like the Spurs here. Jordan’s medicore 1998 Finals (51.6% TS) even with a very friendly whistle on many touch fouls/phantom fouls on the perimeter (70 FTA in low possession games) against a worse Utah defense (though better in the playoffs) might be even worse vs. the Spurs’s ATG defense. As pointed out, the Bulls were living on extra possessions—could they do that vs. Duncan and DRob? As it is, the run could have ended vs. the Pacers had the Pacers grabbed a few rebounds in the fourth quarter of game 7 and/or made a few FTs even though the Pacers weren’t the better team.

Even though the Spurs’s competiton wasn’t the greatest, it’s important to note that Duncan and DRob were as dominant a pair as we have seen in ANY playoffs, i.e., -20 per 100 on court together.

[Djoker]

Would be an interesting series, but I like the Spurs here. Jordan’s medicore 1998 Finals (51.6% TS) even with a very friendly whistle on many touch fouls/phantom fouls on the perimeter (70 FTA in low possession games) against a worse Utah defense (though better in the playoffs) might be even worse vs. the Spurs’s ATG defense. As pointed out, the Bulls were living on extra possessions—could they do that vs. Duncan and DRob? As it is, the run could have ended vs. the Pacers had the Pacers grabbed a few rebounds in the fourth quarter of game 7 and/or made a few FTs even though the Pacers weren’t the better team.

Even though the Spurs’s competiton wasn’t the greatest, it’s important to note that Duncan and DRob were as dominant a pair as we have seen in ANY playoffs, i.e., -20 per 100 on court together.

Utah's defense was much better in the playoffs. Jordan's 51.6 %TS was significantly better than what Utah allowed in the playoffs which was 49.5% %TS.

[homecourtloss]

Would be an interesting series, but I like the Spurs here. Jordan’s medicore 1998 Finals (51.6% TS) even with a very friendly whistle on many touch fouls/phantom fouls on the perimeter (70 FTA in low possession games) against a worse Utah defense (though better in the playoffs) might be even worse vs. the Spurs’s ATG defense. As pointed out, the Bulls were living on extra possessions—could they do that vs. Duncan and DRob? As it is, the run could have ended vs. the Pacers had the Pacers grabbed a few rebounds in the fourth quarter of game 7 and/or made a few FTs even though the Pacers weren’t the better team.

Even though the Spurs’s competiton wasn’t the greatest, it’s important to note that Duncan and DRob were as dominant a pair as we have seen in ANY playoffs, i.e., -20 per 100 on court together.

Utah's defense was much better in the playoffs. Jordan's 51.6 %TS was significantly better than what Utah allowed in the playoffs which was 49.5% %TS.

Eh, that was with a very friendly whistle. 43.9% eFG…Without that whistle, it looks like an ugly offensive series outside the low turnovers, of course. I’m thinking it would be worse versus the Spurs.

[Djoker]

Would be an interesting series, but I like the Spurs here. Jordan’s medicore 1998 Finals (51.6% TS) even with a very friendly whistle on many touch fouls/phantom fouls on the perimeter (70 FTA in low possession games) against a worse Utah defense (though better in the playoffs) might be even worse vs. the Spurs’s ATG defense. As pointed out, the Bulls were living on extra possessions—could they do that vs. Duncan and DRob? As it is, the run could have ended vs. the Pacers had the Pacers grabbed a few rebounds in the fourth quarter of game 7 and/or made a few FTs even though the Pacers weren’t the better team.

Even though the Spurs’s competiton wasn’t the greatest, it’s important to note that Duncan and DRob were as dominant a pair as we have seen in ANY playoffs, i.e., -20 per 100 on court together.

Utah's defense was much better in the playoffs. Jordan's 51.6 %TS was significantly better than what Utah allowed in the playoffs which was 49.5% %TS.

Eh, that was with a very friendly whistle. 43.9% eFG…Without that whistle, it looks like an ugly offensive series outside the low turnovers, of course. I’m thinking it would be worse versus the Spurs.

MJ's super low turnovers and Utah's defense being really good in the playoffs are a big deal though.

Anyways I think no one is really denying that the Spurs' defense would slow down the Bulls' offense. However, it's also hard to deny that the Bulls' defense would also really slow down the Spurs offense.

[lessthanjake]

On this concept of the two defenses slowing each other down, it’s worth taking a look at the first game the two teams played in the 1997-1998 season. Jordan shot 12 for 39, the Bulls didn’t have Pippen, and the Bulls as a whole had a laughable 36.7% TS%…and yet the Bulls won. Of course, this is just one regular season game, it was a really close game, and was only Duncan’s third NBA game (though he actually played well), so it’s not actually very meaningful on its own. But it does go to the general point that the Bulls were more than capable of winning really defensive games where both teams were slowed down a lot. And a major way they were capable of doing that was to just win the possession battle massively. The Bulls shot absolutely horribly and even were bad on FTs, but they won the game mostly because they had 10 fewer turnovers and 14 more offensive rebounds. Winning the possession game is a great way to grind out wins in really defensive games, and the Bulls were extremely good at doing that. I don’t think we have any particularly good reason to think the Bulls couldn’t do that against the 1999 Spurs as well. Of course, not every game would be like that (as an example, their second meeting that season wasn’t—with the Bulls scoring 118.8 points per 100 possessions that game). But I think it’s reasonable to think that a series between these two teams would be a real defensive grind, and I tend to think that that goes in the Bulls’s favor.

[An Unbiased Fan]

98 Bulls win in 5. 99 Spurs benefited from that lockout season, and one of the weakest champs ever

[Calvin Klein]

I'd take the Spurs as a team but MJ is MJ.

It really would have been an awesome matchup to watch.