14 June 1998, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Well, for Bulls fans, there is of course cause for celebration tonight, after a sixth championship that came harder than the others, but there's some anxiousness mixed in as well. Who knows how all of this will play out, but it's certainly possible that tonight we have seen the last of the Chicago Bulls as we have known them, and whether it ends here or sometime in the near future, it'll be noteworthy not just for the breakup of one of the great teams in sports history, but because given the present structure of pro sports, it may be quite a while before we see anything like this again. All the organizations that have the resources, the Yankees, the Braves, the Cowboys, the Lakers in the NBA, will almost always field contending teams, but the days of continuity may be ending. Even on the best teams, there's now so much turnover, that it's becoming ever-harder to follow and identify with teams. Loyalty has been fragmented. Which brings us to an underappreciated aspect of this golden era in the NBA. It hasn't just been Bird, Magic, and Michael. It was the whole recognizable cast of characters around them that gave the Celtics, the Lakers, and the Bulls their texture, and made following them all the more interesting. Even the Jazz, noble runners-up two years in a row, are personified by the longest-tenured coach in the league, and two hall-of-famers who have been teammates for well over a decade. We'll see championship teams in the future, but will we see teams that endure in this way?
And as for Michael Jordan, all the superlatives have been exhausted and almost all apply, but perhaps the most important one is this: he's authentic. His essence is so much deeper than image, in fact the images is, in his case, an amplification of something true and substantive. Take all the money, all the adulation, all the TV cameras away, and put Michael Jordan in a gym somewhere with Russell and Oscar, West and the Doctor, and he'd be as genuine and as much in his element as any of them, his heart and his athletic integrity every bit as impressive as his artistry. So whenever it ends, it's been an incredible ride for Michael Jordan and the Bulls, and we at NBC have been privileged to be taken along for that ride. So as we say goodnight, we'd like to acknowledge the work of all the people who made these telecasts possible. For everyone at NBC Sports, goodnight, from Salt Lake City.