It’s one of the great unanswerable sports questions in history: if Michael Jordan hadn’t retired following the death of his father in 1993, would the Bulls have won 8 straight NBA championships?
Kenny “The Jet” Smith says no. He believes his Houston Rockets team led by Hakeem Olajuwon would’ve beaten the Bulls – with Jordan – had they made it to the 1994 or 1995 NBA Finals.
Smith, now an NBA analyst for TNT, spent some time chatting with Brandon Robinson of Scoop B Radio over the weekend.
Here’s what he had to say about the hypothetical matchup:
“Oh we would’ve beat them. And actually everyone forgets [Jordan] was playing the second year, he was wearing No. 45 and the team they lost to, the Orlando Magic, we swept them. We were that much better than them that year, [and] they lost to them.” – Kenny Smith
Who Takes It?
Smith’s right, at least about a few things. Bulls fans tend to forget that Jordan’s comeback happened late in the ’94-95 season, not the ’95-96 season that saw a record 72 wins and a Finals triumph over Seattle. In the 1995 playoffs, Jordan and the Bulls beat Charlotte in the opening round but fell to Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway’s Magic in the conference semifinals. Smith’s Rockets swept Orlando in the Finals for their second straight title.
As for a hypothetical matchup in ’94? That’s harder to judge. Without Jordan, Scottie Pippen led the Bulls all the way to a conference semifinals Game 7 against Patrick Ewing’s Knicks. New York won Game 7, beat the Pacers to win the East and fell to the Rockets in Game 7 of the Finals. If Jordan was there, it’s very possible – almost likely – the Bulls get past New York and Indiana to meet Houston in the Finals. But Smith advised NBA fans to check the stats from Bulls-Rockets games back in the Jordan era.
“They didn’t match up well with us during those years that they were actually winning championships…We were 8-2 against them during those years. We matched up well with them. We wouldn’t have been scared I tell you that much.” – Kenny Smith
Not Exactly
Here’s where Smith’s testimony gets fuzzy. What did he mean by “those years”? Yes, the Rockets did do well against the Bulls in the early ’90s. But his numbers are off. At no point during Smith’s tenure with Houston (’90-96) did they have an 8-2 stretch against the Bulls with or without Jordan. During the first threepeat years, the Rockets went 5-1 against Chicago but never made it out of the West to face them in the Finals. Then in four games during Jordan’s retirement from ’93-95, the Bulls and Rockets split 2-2.
In the ’95-96 season – Smith’s last with Houston – the Bulls went 2-0 against them, winning the games by a combined 25 points. So even if Houston somehow beat Seattle (who swept the Rockets in the semis) and Utah to reach the Finals, there’s no way they would’ve been favored over the 72-win Bulls.
Catch Smith’s full interview with Scoop B Radio below:
We’ll never know who would’ve come out on top in any of these hypothetical Bulls-Rockets Finals matchups from ’94-96. It’s a shame that arguably the two best teams of the decade never faced one another to decide who truly ruled that era of the NBA.
(Speaking from a slightly biased angle, I think we all can agree which team ruled the ’90s.)
