Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf has watched how the popular ESPN docuseries “The Last Dance” ended with the protagonist, Michael Jordan, rivaling his reasoning for blowing up the 1997-98 roster to smithereens in a lockout-bound season.
In the last few minutes of “The Last Dance,” Reinsdorf offers that the players' market value would have been too steep to re-sign and that Phil Jackson wanted no part of a rebuild. Jordan, who offered he'd never had this argument with Reinsdorf, countered that he feels most of his teammates would have been willing to come back on one-year deals to chase a fourth straight title.
Reinsdorf gave his take on Jordan's final response:
“The fact is, it's pretty obvious in 1998 that Michael carried this team,” Reinsdorf told ESPN's Ramona Shelburne. “These guys were gassed. He could not have come back because of the cut finger. But even if he could've come back, the other players [Steve Kerr, Luc Longley, Jud Buechler, Dennis Rodman] were going to get offers that were way in excess of what they were worth.
“I know in Episode 10, [Jordan] says, ‘They all would've come back for one year.' But there's not a chance in the world that Scottie Pippen would've come back on a one-year contract when he knew he could get a much bigger contract someplace else.”
As highlighted by “The Last Dance,” Pippen had his own contentions with Bulls management, as he played the last year of a seven-year, $18 million contract extension that had grown to undervalue his worth to the team.
Jordan's sidekick was looking for a pay raise and seemed determined to leave. The Bulls could have made a substantial one-year offer to bring Pippen back, but he may not have been willing to do that, instead hoping for a lucrative long-term deal.
The Bulls ultimately helped facilitate a Pippen sign-and-trade deal to the Houston Rockets, and he got paid in the form of a five-year, $67 million contract that went up to around $77 million with incentives. Jordan retired for a second time and Phil Jackson stepped away, with Dennis Rodman and Steve Kerr also going elsewhere.
Maybe looking back in retrospect, the competitor in Jordan wants to believe the Bulls could have had another go, but there were simply too many things beyond his control to make that a reality.
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