Former All-Star Mark Jackson spent a good part of his career with the Indiana Pacers. In fact, he was a key member of the 1997-98 team that advanced to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals. He most recently opened up about how he thought his Pacers matched up against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the 1990's.
According to Jackson, he firmly believes that the Pacers were a superior team as opposed to the Bulls, who won no less than six titles during that era.
“It was nothing against them, but we believed that we were the better basketball team,” Jackson declared, via Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated. We believed we had every answer for the problems they presented. That’s not a slight or disrespect, we had ultimate respect for them—Michael’s greatness, Scottie’s greatness, Dennis Rodman’s greatness, their greatness as a team, Phil Jackson’s greatness as a coach—but we thought it was our time. Having our best player in Reggie Miller, a Hall of Famer and superstar, being able to pretty much fight to a standstill against the great Michael Jordan. That’s not saying he’s better than him, but we believed he could fight him to a standstill and we could handle the rest.”
Indiana's most memorable meeting against Jordan's Bulls in the playoffs has got to be their epic seven-game series during the 1998 Eastern Conference Finals. The Bulls went on to advance to the Finals, en route to their second three-peat, but Indiana did not go down without a fight.
Jackson went on to explain why he and the rest of the Pacers had every right not to fear the Bulls.
“We respected Chicago, but we did not fear them,” he added. “That’s because we had success against them. Even in their 72-win season, when the Bulls only lost 10 games, we beat them twice. We had tremendous confidence and belief that we could beat them.”
Well, not fearing them and actually defeating them when it mattered most are two completely different things.
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