NBA Betting

History of the NBA Finals

Chicago Bulls vs. Los Angeles Lakers - 1991

Courtesy Chicago Bulls

Pippen's durability was questioned by the media, but he led the Bulls in playoff minutes.

It took them a quarter of a century to do it, but the Chicago Bulls finally are champions of the National Basketball Association. It took Michael Jordan seven years to do it, but it probably seemed like 70.

After three straight years of agonizing playoff defeats at the hands of archrival Detroit, the Bulls conquered the ghosts of playoffs past with a five-game victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1991 NBA Finals. And Jordan, the game's best player, finally silenced those who doubted that he could ever lead his team to a championship.

The final series was billed as a matchup between Jordan and the Lakers' Magic Johnson, two players who had combined to win the NBA's last five Most Valuable Player awards. Jordan and Johnson led their respective teams in scoring, assists and minutes played in the Finals but, in the end, Johnson's quest for a sixth championship ring gave way to Jordan's quest for a first.

"When I came here, we started from scratch," said Jordan, who joined the Bulls only weeks after leading the U.S. team to the gold medal in the 1984 Olympics. "I vowed we'd make the playoffs every year, and each year we got closer. I always had faith I'd get this ring one day."

However, Jordan soon discovered that it would take longer to lead the Bulls to the top of the pro basketball world than it would to win the Olympics. Or an NCAA championship, which Jordan, as a precocious 19-year-old freshman, helped North Carolina win in 1982.

Fair or not, on the eve of the 1991 playoffs, some people evaluated Jordan's NBA career more by its lack of championships than by his five scoring titles, two MXTP awards or five All-NBA first team citations. He had never led the Bulls to a title- even a division title. Until 1991.

But last spring changed everything. The Magnificent Michael averaged 31.2 points and was a unanimous choice as Finals MVP. And, contrary to those who called Chicago a one-man team, he had help: Forward Scottie Pippen, an electrifying fourth-year player, had a terrific final against Los Angeles and played more playoff minutes in 1991 than any other Bull. His 32 points in the title-clinching fifth game marked the first time someone other than Jordan was Chicago's leading postseason scorer.

Pippen, in fact, had some baggage of his own to shed. When he couldn't play at full strength in Game 7 of the 1990 Eastern Conference finals against the Pistons because of a migraine headache, he took an awful beating in the media. Anyone who has ever experienced a migraine could understand Pippen's dilemma. But in the macho world of sports, you play with pain. Pippen didn't, and he couldn't get that rap off his mind until after the Bulls won the 1991 championship.

"I thought about it all summer," Pippen said of the '90 migraine. "I failed to produce last season. I wanted to be in this position again."

Another player critical to Chicago's success was guard John Paxson, an eight-year veteran who was content playing second fiddle to Jordan in the backcourt and doing what he does best: hitting 18-foot jump shots. Paxson hit 29 of his last 42 shots against the Lakers and scored eight points in a 10-3 Chicago run late in the fourth quarter that broke Game 5 open.

"Does Paxson ever miss?" Lakers forward Sam Perkins asked in exasperation. "Every time he got the ball, he put it in. It killed us."

And not just in Game 5. Paxson was eight for eight and scored 16 points in the Bulls' 107-8 6 victory in Game 2, which evened the series at 1-1. Winning that game was crucial for the Bulls, who had lost the first game, 93-91, at Chicago Stadium on a three-point basket by Perkins with 14 seconds left. That loss had been particularly painful for the Bulls, who saw Jordan's 18-foot jump shot with four seconds left go in and out.

"My job is to shoot the open jumpers," Paxson said after Game 2, "and when I'm in my rhythm, I feel like I'm going to make them all."

In Game 2, Chicago's starters (Jordan, Pippen, Paxson, Horace Grant and Bill Cartwright) shot an amazing 73.4 percent from the floor. The entire Bulls team set an NBA Finals record by hitting 61.7 percent of its shots.

Chicago's best marksman (surprise, surprise) was Jordan, who canned 15 of 18 shots from the field to lead the Bulls with 33 points. Even more amazing was that Jordan, a shooting guard, moved to point guard to direct the attack and get his teammates more involved in the offense. The result? Five Chicago players scored in double figures.

"That's the way Michael is," Bulls Coach Phil Jackson said. "He's a challenge kind of guy."

Said Lakers Coach Mike Dunleavy: "Despite what happened tonight, we came here and did what we had to do, which was get a split. Now we'll see if it pays."

It didn't, as the Bulls took a 2-1 lead in the series with a 104-96 overtime win at Los Angeles in Game 3. Jordan scored six points in the extra period after sending the game into overtime by hitting a jumper with 3.4 seconds left. The game was tied, 96-96, in overtime before the Bulls ran off eight straight points, the first two coming when Jordan drove the baseline for a basket with 1:54 left.

"This was a crucial game for us," said Jordan, whose team regained the home-court advantage in the series. "We feel really good to be in this position, but we can't be comfortable. When you play the Lakers, you are never really in control because they have been here before and know what it takes to win big ball games."

Indeed, the Lakers were making their ninth NBA Finals appearance since 1980 and had five players (Johnson, James Worthy, Byron Scott, A.C. Green and Mychal Thompson) with a combined 123 games of Finals experience. No Bull had played in a single NBA Finals game. "The Lakers have experience on us," Pippen admitted, "but we have enough to win."

In Game 4, the Bulls employed a suffocating defense to take a 3-1 series lead. They trapped and harassed the Lakers into a woeful 37 percent shooting performance en route to a 97-82 victory. The 82 points were the fewest by the Lakers in a Finals game since the shot clock was adopted in 1954. They scored only 30 points in the second and third quarters.

"I didn't even dream this would happen," said Johnson, who had 22 points and 11 assists in the defeat. "Man, there in the third quarter, it got scary. I was wondering: 'Are we ever going to hit one shot? Somebody?'"

Perkins, whose three-point basket late in Game 1 prevented a possible four-game sweep, shot a dreadful .067 (one of 15) from the field. "It's no surprise the way (the Bulls have) been defending," Dunleavy said. "They are very athletic and very smart."

And very careful. Chicago committed just five turnovers in Game 4, another Finals record.

"We're in a ditch, not just a hole," Dunleavy said. "We know no one's come back from a 3-1 deficit (in the Finals). Somebody's got to do it sometime. We hope we're the teani."

The Lakers weren't. The fifth game of the series was more of the same, with the Bulls winning, 108-101, to nail down the championship. Pippen's 32 points led Chicago, but Paxson-who finished with 20 points-hit five baskets in the last four minutes to drive a stake through the Lakers' heart.

The victory was Chicago's fourth straight and third in a row at the Great Western Forum. The Lakers, who were forced to play without injured starters Worthy and Scott for part of Game 4 and all of Game 5, scored a record-low 458 points in the five-game series.

For their part, the Bulls gave up 100 or more points in just three of their 17 playoff games.

The excitement of winning his first title was almost too much for Jordan to handle. An hour after Game 5 ended, he still had tears in his eyes and difficulty putting his feelings into words.

"I never thought I'd be this emotional," said Jordan, who became the first regular-season scoring champion since Milwaukee's Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1971 to lead his team to the championship. "I've never been this emotional publicly."

The fact that it had taken other NBA greats (Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain) more years to win their first championships or that other greats (Elgin Baylor, Dave Bing, Nate Thurmond) never won any was small consolation to Jordan.

This was a man who had been on a crusade, and now the crusade was over.