1995-96 NBA Finals

Result

Games

Finals MVP

Michael Jordan. Jordan won his fourth Finals MVP award in his first full season back after returning from his brief retirement to play minor league baseball.

Series context

The 1995-96 season was the first full campaign of Michael Jordan's return to the Chicago Bulls after his stint in minor league baseball, and it produced arguably the greatest regular season in NBA history to that point: a 72-10 record, a new league benchmark that stood until the Golden State Warriors surpassed it in 2015-16. The Bulls' roster had been reshaped around Jordan and longtime running mate Scottie Pippen with the offseason addition of rebounding specialist Dennis Rodman. Chicago rolled through the Eastern Conference playoffs, sweeping the Miami Heat and New York Knicks before sweeping the Orlando Magic in the Conference Finals, setting up a Finals matchup with the Western Conference champion Seattle SuperSonics. Seattle, led by All-Stars Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp under coach George Karl, had posted a 64-18 record and were making their first Finals appearance since 1979. Despite the strong pedigree, the SuperSonics found themselves overwhelmed early: Chicago won the first three games of the series comfortably, taking Game 1 107-90, Game 2 92-88, and Game 3 108-86, appearing headed for a sweep. Seattle avoided further embarrassment by regrouping defensively, with Payton taking on primary defensive assignment of Jordan, and won Game 4 107-86 and Game 5 89-78 to cut the series deficit to 3-2 and send the series back to Chicago. The Bulls closed it out at home in Game 6, winning 87-75 on Father's Day, with Jordan visibly emotional afterward, embracing the game ball on the floor in a moment widely linked to the death of his father, James Jordan, in 1993. The championship was the Bulls' fourth in six years and marked Jordan's triumphant return to the top of the league after skipping most of the 1993-94 and part of the 1994-95 seasons. It was also the last Finals appearance for the SuperSonics in Seattle before the franchise relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008 to become the Thunder. The 1995-96 championship began what became known as the Bulls' 'second three-peat,' running through the 1997-98 season. Jordan was named Finals MVP for the fourth time, finishing the clinching Game 6 with 22 points, while Rodman set a Finals record with 11 offensive rebounds in Game 2 and matched his own mark with 19 rebounds in Game 6. Seattle's road to the Finals was itself notable: the SuperSonics swept the defending-champion Houston Rockets in the conference semifinals before outlasting Utah in seven games in the Western Conference finals, a tougher path than Chicago's, which included a five-game series against the Knicks sandwiched between sweeps of Miami and Orlando. Chicago's 72 regular-season wins stood as the NBA record for two decades, until the Golden State Warriors won 73 games in 2015-16, and the Bulls' combined mark of 87 wins across the regular season and playoffs also stood as a league record until Golden State's 88 total wins that same season.

Sources

• Wikipedia - 1996 NBA Finals
• Basketball-Reference - 1996 NBA Finals