In 1995-96, the Chicago Bulls won a then-NBA record 72 games. That team is considered by many the greatest team in NBA history.
Well, the 64-win Seattle SuperSonics were pretty darn good in their own right. But that didn’t stop the Bulls from going up 3-0 on Seattle in the NBA Finals.
Former coach George Karl dropped by CBS Sports Radio to reflect on that series, as well as what he could have done differently, if anything, to make it more competitive.
“I’d probably give Gary Payton more assignments,” Karl said on The Zach Gelb Show. “I’d probably get him fired up to cover Michael. Gary was a feisty guy, and he liked playing with an edge. When I didn’t give him Michael early in the series, I think he was [disappointed] by it. He still played well. But I think I probably would have changed that philosophy. Instead of trying to save him for the end of the series, and maybe even in the middle of the series, I probably should have put him on Michael from the very beginning.”
Karl, though, didn’t do that, in part because of a lack of depth at the point guard position.
“A lot of things [went] into it,” Karl said. “Nate McMillan was hurt, did not play in the first three games. I really did not have a really good backup at the point guard position, so we were going to play Gary in the high-40s – probably 45, 46 minutes. I didn’t [want] to tire him out, and Gary had a little bit of a calf strain from the Utah series. It was a little bit more than just a little calf strain. He was playing in some pain. And not having Nate McMillan, I didn’t have as much depth, and I was afraid of foul trouble. [If Payton gets in foul trouble], all of a sudden I don’t have a point guard on the court. So there was some other reasons. In general after our meetings, we said we wanted to save Gary for the fourth quarter and maybe for Game 4, 5, 6, and 7.”
The Bulls won the first three games of the Finals by an average of 14.3 points. Seattle, to its credit, won Games 4 and 5 to force a Game 6, which the Bulls ultimately won, 87-75.
If Payton had guarded Jordan from the start, do the Sonics win that series?
“I don’t know if we win the series,” Karl said. “I think the key to our team that people don’t understand was Nate McMillan. Nate McMillan, in that season, was – by our analytics – the third-best defensive player in the NBA. Gary was the heart of our team, but Nate was the soul of our team. He was the guy that everybody trusted and believed, and he was the guy that glued everybody together. In Game 4 and Game 5 when Michael didn’t play very well, Nate was on the court. He didn’t necessarily have a big impact on the game, but the little things of basketball, the intangibles of basketball, Nate gave us. If Nate would have been healthy for that series, I would say it would have been a seven-game series. But I’m not going to say the strategy of Gary [cost us the series].”
Worth noting: Jordan shot just 41.5 percent in that series and was held under 30 points in five of six games. Seattle, relatively speaking, did a good job on Jordan.
“It wasn’t about Michael Jordan beating us,” Karl said. “The problem was we couldn’t score enough points. Their defense has total control of us in Game 6. They were a great defensive team. I think they shot 41 percent for the series. Michael averaged the [fewest] points of all the six Finals he played in. He had the least amount of points against us. We got hurt by Rodman. We got hurt by Kukoc a little bit. And in the final game, here you have maybe the highest-motivated, intense superstar ever to play the game playing on Father’s Day after he lost his father. There’s a lot of things other than Gary and Michael.”