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When Chicago Bulls basketball in the 1990s is discussed, the conversation quickly devolves into one-word titles. Michael. Phil. Scottie. It's the rare kind of treatment that's generally granted to historical conquering heroes, the best friends you grew up with, or Brazilian soccer stars. A mix that's both universal and personal at the same time. That's Bulls hoops in the 90s, a stretch of six championships in eight seasons known by almost everybody on earth but, at the same time, experienced via our own personal prisms. What did Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson and Scottie Pippen signify? Well, it depends on who you were at the time; whether you took them for the most mesmerizing team in decades or a constant source of anguish reflects that point in your life and maybe on whether or not you lived in Utah or New York.
Some aspects, however, are indisputable. The cachet of Jordan's celebrity and the cultural weight of the Air Jordan line defined ruthless efficiency — the Showtime Lakers were prettier overall but hey, even they lost to the Celtics a few times — like never before. Here are The Sneakers Worn for the 10 Most Memorable Chicago Bulls Moments of the '90s.
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No. 10 - The Knicks Overcome
On Jordan's Feet: Air Jordan VIII
Date: June 2, 1993
Game: Chicago vs. New York, Eastern Conference Finals, Game 5
John Paxson's NBA-title-clinching triple in Phoenix wouldn't have happened if the Bulls hadn't self-administered a defibrillator to their collective chests one round earlier in the 1993 NBA playoffs. Yeah, we're talking Knicks-Bulls, the rivalry of the decade's first half. Just as it always seems to be, New York was on the short side of history in the Eastern Conference Finals despite taking a 2-0 series lead. Following MJ's lead in his Jordan 8s, the Bulls strapped in to their mid-cut kicks and slashed the lead after Jordan's 54 points in Game 3. Blood was in the water. Fast forward two games and four days and the "Charles Smith Game" seemed to sum up most of these two battles in the 90s: Smith flailed four straight times just inches from the rim, only to get blocked by Pippen twice and stripped by Jordan once before MJ caught the outlet and fed B.J. Armstrong for the clinching hoop and a 3-2 series lead. The harried, not always pretty finish seemed appropriate for the shoe Jordan did it in, what with the 8's odd mix of styling that straddled the line between avante-garde (straps and a graffiti-esque color swath) and odd (the tongue featured a fuzzy Jumpman logo).
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No. 9 - Pippen's Breakout Season
On Pippen's feet: Nike Air Flight Swift
Date: May 20, 1994
Game: Chicago vs. New York, Eastern Conference Semifinals, Game 6
Pippen probably knew it was only a matter of time before MJ dropped baseball and his first retirement and returned to the hardwood to claim his rightful place in history. Thing was, after Pippen's breakout season in 1994 as the Bulls' alpha dog, we weren't quite sure where the supposed sidekick's rightful role was anymore. MJ, of course, would take back the franchise's mantle the second he crafted his "I'm back" press release in 1995 but before then, Pippen would be damned if he didn't remind everyone he wasn't a freeloader on the road to the first Chicago three-peat. His punishing fast-break slam-and-stepover in the 1994 Eastern Conference playoffs emasculated New York's Patrick Ewing and delivered Chicago's signature moment of MJ's first retirement.
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No. 8 - Kerr Buries the Jazz
On Kerr's feet: Nike Air Rise Uptempo
Date: June 13, 1997
Game: Chicago vs. Utah, NBA Finals, Game 6
Steve Kerr reprised one of the great bit parts of the decade during the 1997 NBA Finals against Utah. Asked by Phil Jackson to open the spacing with his three-point threat just as John Paxson had done four years earlier against Phoenix, Kerr was easy to forget about until he gleefully drilled a shot in your favorite player's mug (and, doing it while looking like your suburban neighborhood dad). Just like Paxson, he didn't create shots, he made them, and none was bigger than his Game 6 game-winner against the Jazz in Chicago. With the score tied at 86, Jordan drew two defenders before finding Kerr, who hit a 17-footer as John Stockton ran in vain to recover on D. Unlike Paxson, who sprinted back to the Chicago bench in a raucous celebration after his '93 shot, Kerr gave the coldest non-celebration we've ever seen on a Finals-winning bucket. He waited to let loose until after Pippen stole Utah's last inbound pass at midcourt. Like Kerr, the low-profile Air Rise Uptempo (with no visible Nike Air and with a muted black upper) reminded us any good assassin has to blend in before he strikes.
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No. 7 - The Shrug Game
On MJ's feet: Air Jordan VII
Date: June 3, 1992
Game: Chicago vs. Portland, NBA Finals Game 1
The Jordan 7 wasn't the first to employ an inner bootie (that began a year earlier), but the running-inspired Air Jordan's sockliner was meant to put on the hardwood the technology that supported distance runners. If it was designed with marathon imagery in mind, Jordan delivered in 1992 with one of the all-time great years in basketball history, culminating with a regular-season MVP, an NBA Finals MVP and championship and the Barcelona Olympics gold medal (only LeBron James can match that one-year feat). It was a long run, one that rounded the turn into the final 100 meters starting in the Finals against Portland. Maybe most frustrating to the Trail Blazers in the Finals — well, alongside the knowledge they passed on drafting MJ — was how even when you thought you knew MJ's game inside and out, he still found a way to make all the blood drain from your face. His Airness was only a 27-percent three-point shooter, but he knocked down six in the first half of Game 1 for a Finals-record 35 first-half points, a display capped by the famous shrug. We shouldn't have been all that surprised, though: not from Jordan's outburst, and not from the 7s that kept the bar for the rest of the industry impossibly high.
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No. 6 - All Year Long
On MJ's Feet: Air Jordan XI
Date: 1995-96
Game: NBA regular season
If you think calling the entire 1996 season a "moment" is stretching the definition a little, consider that Jordan and the Bulls' feats that season, and the kicks he did it in, continue to stretch how we perceive basketball and sneakers now. Like many in the Air Jordan line, the "Concord" seems developed precisely for the historic 72-10 season as if written into the script well before we saw what both would become. The wraparound patent leather atop the blue-tinted outsole connoted elegance — perhaps a basketball and pop cultural coronation? — mixed with brutal efficiency, like James Bond razing a small army while dressed in a tux. MJ and Chicago not only knocked everyone out cold in 1995-96, they did it while looking more refined than ever.
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No. 5 - Jordan's Legendary "Flu Game"
On MJ's feet: Air Jordan XII
Date: June 11, 1997
Game: Chicago vs. Utah, NBA Finals Game 5
History says Jordan was sick. Rumor has it, from uber-trainer Tim Grover, he was poisoned. Jalen Rose says he was hungover. Here's the absolute truth: In Game 5 of the 1997 Finals, MJ dropped 38 points and seven boards in a win that instead left everyone in Salt Lake City ready to gag. It did more than add another moment to Jordan's NBA epitaph, however; it took an already outrageously popular sneaker and moved it into kicks lore. A sneaker inspired by Tinker Hatfield's imagery of a sun over the ocean, with stitching as its rays, raises a natural question: Is this sun rising or setting? Jordan's Game 5 in the black/red colorway answered that emphatically.
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No. 4 - Jordan Takes Madison Square Garden
On MJ's feet: Air Jordan X
Date: March 28, 1995
Game: Chicago vs. New York
The rule of Chekhov's gun says if a gun is shown in a play's first act, it must go off in the third. Well, if you debut a sneaker called the Air Jordan X "City Series" complete with a red/black/white colorway named the "Chicago," it's only right that this would be the shoe Jordan would play his comeback season in. Think about it: A sneaker series created to pay homage to some of the cities were Jordan made his name is the tailor-made vehicle to showcase his career's second act. Make no mistake, a "New York" version of the shoe was created for a reason, too: Madison Square Garden was the site where he cut his teeth with many of his best performances. His 55-point night on March 29 in his fifth game back as a Bull may be the very best of those New York games.
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No. 3 - New Reign, New Decade
On MJ's feet: Air Jordan VI
Date: June 5, 1991
Game: Chicago vs. Los Angeles Lakers, NBA Finals Game 2
The Barcelona Olympics gave us The Dream Team, more Charles Barkley stories than we know what to do with, a tie-dyed Lithuanian national team and the landmark basketball moment of the 1990s. It also gave us a warped sense of time. The easy story is that it marked the transition from Magic's Lakers to Michael's Bulls for good. The 80s vs. 90s divide had been conquered an entire year earlier, however, in the 1991 Finals against Los Angeles. In Game 2 he drove the lane, famously spied Sam Perkins reaching up for a block, and switched the ball from his right hand to his left in mid-air, almost at the point of coming down. We were left to think, what the hell was that? This wasn't anything like the basketball we knew up to that point of the 90s, not after the way Detroit's Bad Boy basketball had taken over and the way teams answered it with their own, bruising imitation. Nah, this was like Baz Luhrmann's version of hoops, a kind saturated with beauty, slow-mo replays and two colliding story arcs. Against the remnants of the Showtime Lakers, it was a fitting tribute to the end of the L.A. era and the arrival of Jordan's first title.
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No. 2 - John Paxton Becomes a Hero to Remember
On Paxson's feet: Reebok Pump Above The Rim D-Time
Date: June 20, 1993
Game: Chicago vs. Phoenix, NBA Finals Game 6
It's less a reality and more a convenient saying that you can't take the ball out of a star's hand in crunch time. For most of the 1993 NBA Finals, when MJ averaged an incredible that's-not-a-typo
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No. 1 - The Shot
On MJ's feet: Air Jordan XIV
Date: June 14, 1998
Game: Chicago vs. Utah, NBA Finals Game 6
Between The Strip (on Karl Malone) and The Shot (that broke hearts across Utah) came The Slip — and a reminder that the greatest Bulls moment of the 1990s could trace its roots back a decade before. Jordan capped his 45-point performance to win Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals with a jumper heard 'round the world. He drilled it on a defender in Bryon Russell who was left grappling for air once he lost his footing going one-on-one with the GOAT. In that split second — before MJ's pure jumper, the held follow-through and the six-finger salute to Utah's arena — Mars Blackmon had been right all along in those '80s Nike ads. It had to be the shoes. While Russell stumbled against the combination of Jordan's crossover and forearm, MJ's Jordan 14s held tight to the floor for the most iconic jumper of his career, much like how the shoe's inspiration, a Lambo, makes alpine hairpin turns look like a school zone.
That final 15 seconds quite possibly encapsulates Jordan better than any other stretch in his career. He turned a position of weakness into a strength, forced us to look at his kicks, and hit a shot that would define an era. Appropriately, it all happened in an Air Jordan. As it should be.
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