1996-97 NBA Finals

Result

Games

Finals MVP

Michael Jordan. Jordan won his fifth Finals MVP award, averaging around 39 points across the final two games of the series.

Series context

The 1996-97 NBA Finals brought together two of the decade's dominant regular-season teams: the Chicago Bulls, who finished 69-13 after their record 72-win campaign the year before, and the Utah Jazz, who finished 64-19 behind league MVP Karl Malone and longtime point guard John Stockton, one of the most enduring pick-and-roll duos in NBA history. It was the Jazz's first-ever trip to the NBA Finals after more than a decade of frustrating near-misses in the Western Conference. The series opened in Chicago, where Game 1 ended on a Jordan buzzer-beater for an 84-82 win, a game also remembered for Scottie Pippen's needling comments to Malone before a key free throw, which many believed rattled Malone in the clutch. Chicago dominated Game 2, 97-85, with Malone struggling from the field. Utah responded in Salt Lake City, winning Game 3 104-93 behind a Finals-record-setting three-point shooting effort, and taking Game 4 78-73 in the lowest-scoring game of the series, evening the series at 2-2 heading back to Chicago. Game 5 became one of the most legendary games in Finals history: Jordan, suffering from a severe stomach illness (dubbed 'The Flu Game,' though later reporting suggested food poisoning was the more likely cause), played through visible exhaustion and dehydration to score 38 points, including a decisive late three-pointer, in a 90-88 Bulls win. Chicago then closed out the series in Game 6, 90-86, on a game-winning jumper by reserve guard Steve Kerr off a pass from Jordan, giving Chicago its fifth championship of the decade. This title extended the Bulls' dynasty into what became known as their second three-peat and gave Jordan his fifth Finals MVP award, tying him for the most in league history at the time. For Utah, the loss was the first of back-to-back Finals defeats to Chicago, cementing Malone and Stockton's legacy as one of the greatest duos never to win a championship. Jordan's Game 6 clincher was a complete performance, 39 points, 11 rebounds and 4 assists in 44 minutes, and it came after Chicago needed all seven games to escape Indiana in the second round and Miami in five in the conference finals, a tougher path than their gaudy regular-season record suggested. Utah's road to its first Finals was similarly hard-earned: the Jazz swept the Clippers, beat the Lakers in five, and then eliminated the two-time defending champion Houston Rockets in six games, with John Stockton hitting a buzzer-beating three-pointer to clinch the Western Conference finals. Game 1 also turned partly on a Malone missed pair of free throws with nine seconds left after Pippen's sideline needling, a sequence still cited as one of the more consequential gamesmanship moments in Finals history. Attendance across the series ran roughly 24,500 per game at Chicago's United Center against 19,911 at Utah's Delta Center, underscoring the gap in arena capacity between the two markets even as the teams were evenly matched on the floor.

Sources

• Wikipedia - 1997 NBA Finals
• Basketball-Reference - 1997 NBA Finals