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Jordan recalls ‘trying’ sixth title

Published:Friday | April 17, 2020 | 12:08 AM
Michael Jordan making the final shot that won the Chicago Bulls their sixth NBA Championship trophy. It was also the last game he played with the Bulls.
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Michael Jordan making the final shot that won the Chicago Bulls their sixth NBA Championship trophy. It was also the last game he played with the Bulls.

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (AP):

MICHAEL JORDAN described his final NBA championship season with the Chicago Bulls as a “trying year”.

“We were all trying to enjoy that year, knowing it was coming to an end,” Jordan told ‘Good Morning America’ yesterday. Jordan appeared on the show via videoconference from his home in Florida to promote The Last Dance, a 10-part documentary series focused on the final year of the ‘90s Bulls dynasty that won six NBA titles in eight years.

“The beginning of the season, it started when (General Manager) Jerry Krause told (coach) Phil Jackson that he could go 82-0 and he would never get a chance to come back,” Jordan said. “Knowing that I had married myself to him, and if he wasn’t going to be the coach, then obviously I wasn’t going to play. So Phil started off the season saying this was the last dance – and we played it that way.”

SERIES DEBUT

The series will debut Sunday night on ESPN in the United States and on Netflix internationally over five consecutive Sundays through to May 17. There will be two hour-long episodes each of those nights.

Jordan said yesterday that after Jackson told the team it was to be the final season together, the Bulls focused on completing the task of a second three-peat.

“Mentally, it tugged at you that this had to come to an end, but it also centred our focus to making sure we ended it right,” Jordan said. “As sad as it sounded at the beginning of the year, we tried to rejoice and enjoy the year and finish it off the right way.”

The documentary was originally scheduled to be released in June during the NBA Finals, but ESPN made the decision to accelerate its release due to the lack of live sports programming because of the coronavirus pandemic. The series has been billed to include never-before-seen footage from that season, during which the team chased its sixth championship.