The Greatest Games Of Michael Jordan's Career

To commemorate the 15 years that have passed since His Airness retired from the NBA for the third and final time, we ranked Michael Jordan's 15 greatest games. Whether it's postseason salvos, reckonings of revenge, or finishing off the NBA finals with a flourish, each of these games helped MJ become basketball's GOAT.

Michael Jordan
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Image via Andrew D. Bernstein for Getty Images

Michael Jordan

It’s been 15 years since Michael Jordan finally hung up his iconic kicks once and for all. A lot has changed since then; social media has infiltrated the NBA, and beef between players often originates within a character limit, rather than the 94-by-50-foot confines of an NBA court. Thankfully for Michael Jordan’s peers, Twitter wasn’t around in his era, or else he might have fully adorned his second hand with championship bling.

Unfortunately, because so much has changed, today’s young fans may only know him as a meme. For elder basketball fans, that’s simply not right. There’s a reason that an entire generation of hoops aficionados consider MJ basketball’s G.O.A.T, and might always believe so, no matter how much Kobe and LeBron stans might try to convince you that you  don’t need to “Be like Mike” to be the best.

It’s true that a lot has gone down since MJ’s regretful return in Washington came to a creaky-knee conclusion, but it’s important to remind young fans about the legend of His Airness; especially those now-forgotten performances that prove  he’s the sport’s true G.O.A.T.

It’s easy to pick his worst games—there were so few of them. But his greatest? No matter how big the list, there’s always a lot on the cutting room floor. Like the time he dropped 61 in regulation against Dominique Wilkins, or the 54 he scored against the Heat in the last three sessions to knock them out of the 1993 Playoffs. We had to leave out the time he dropped 40 as a 40-year-old, and the 10 triple-doubles he posted in an 11-game stretch. We can’t keep them all, though we wish we could.

These are Michael Jordan’s 15 greatest games, in honor of the 15-year anniversary of him to gracing an NBA hardwood for the final time. All told, these performances helped a legend transcend beyond the game itself.

15. Dropping 51 at 38

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This is the only game where MJ was rocking a Wizards uniform, and we would have left it off entirely for a slew of other games, if it wasn’t so incredible. While most Jordan acolytes like to pretend the Wizards years never happened, the man could still drop buckets even after his knees went.

14. The Career-High

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Jordan has dropped 60-plus points four times in his career, and only Kobe Bryant and Wilt Chamberlain have had more. But this instance in particular stands out, and is proof of just how spectacular he was over his career. His shooting line: 23-of-37 from the field, 21-of-23 from the charity stripe, but no 3-pointers. It came against the Cavs less than a year after he ripped their hearts out in a game further down this list.

13. His Answer to Jeff Van Gundy’s “Con Man” Comments

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This is the first of three major MJ moments against the Knicks, who had the unfortunate luck of playing in the same conference as him. A few days before his Knicks faced MJ’s Bulls, coach Jeff Van Gundy said in a 1997 radio interview that Jordan tried to “con” NBA players into thinking he was their friend. MJ responded by scoring 51 points in a 88-87 win.

After the game, Bulls coach Phil Jackson eschewed hyperbole when he said, “It was probably a tactical mistake by the coach of the Knicks to attack Michael in the press.”

12. Crushing the Knicks in Game 7 of the 1992 Conference Semifinals

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After a horrid Game 6 at MSG (9-of-25 from the field and seven turnovers), Jordan came back with a flourish in Chicago for the deciding Game 7. He scored 42 (along with 2 steals and 3 blocks) and propelled the Bulls to an easy  110-81 victory.

11. Post Atlantic City Eruption vs. the Knicks in the 1993 Conference Finals

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The Knicks led the Bulls 2-0 in the 1993 Eastern Conference finals, and MJ was feeling the media’s glare after he was spotted gambling in nearby Atlantic City between games 1 and 2. He shot abysmally in those first two games, and was even worse (3-of-17) in a Game 3 win (though he did play a role in swatting Charles Smith to preserve the win, and dished 11 assists). Then came Game 4, in which MJ dropped 54, and the Bulls went on to win their third straight title.

10. The “Freeze Out” Isiah Thomas Revenge

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In Jordan’s rookie season, he was selected to his first All-Star team. But Pistons guard Isiah Thomas decided he was going to teach the young Bulls dynamo a lesson, and convinced his teammates to freeze MJ out (he would finish with just seven points). It just so happened that the Bulls were playing the Pistons after the break. MJ scored 49 on 19-of-31 shooting, to go with 15 rebounds, five assists, and four steals in a 13-point demolition. Revenge would go on to fuel a lot of MJ’s biggest games, but this was one of the first.

9. The Unseen Dream Team Scrimmage Against Magic in Monaco

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This was an exhibition, and until recently it was more legend than fact. But it happened, as Jack McCallum detailed in his seminal book, Dream Team. Jordan himself called it “the best game I ever played in.” It all went down during training in Monaco, leading up to the 1992 Olympics. According to accounts, a team helmed by Magic Johnson battled Jordan’s squad. The mysterious scrimmage doubled as the passing of a torch, if only on a metaphorical level, since Magic had announced his retirement from the NBA the previous fall and Jordan had just won his second straight title in June.

8. Game 4 Against Charles Barkley in the Finals

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Barkley won the MVP in 1993, and if you think MJ didn’t take that as a personal affront, then you haven’t been paying much attention to this list so far. MJ and Chuck were in fact very close at the time, but Jordan was like Bill Russell, in that he’d go out to eat with you the night before the game, then eviscerate you the next night.

That’s what he did during Game 4 in Chicago, after the Suns surprised them in Game 3. Barkley had 32 points, but Jordan dropped 55 on an absurdly efficient 21-of-37 from the field. The Suns would go on to win Game 5, but the Bulls wrapped it back in Phoenix for MJ’s third straight title.

7. "The Shot"

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You’ve seen this clip a thousand times, but you might not know the context. It’s so famous, Wikipedia refers to it simply as, “The Shot.” At the time, Jordan wasn’t yet on top of the world, and most of the media still wrote him off as a singular scoring talent who couldn’t win when it mattered. But against the Cavs in a deciding Game 5 (opening round was best-of-5 in those days) during the 1989 playoffs, Jordan scored 44 points, punctuated by his historic double-clutch series-winning buzzer-beater over poor Craig Ehlo.

What followed was perhaps the most air anyone’s ever gotten on a celebratory fist pump.

6. The “Double Nickel”

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Although Jordan retired from basketball following his first 3-peat, he was young enough many thought he’d return. But then he started lunging at curve balls in small Alabama towns and riding a bus, and many thought he was done for good.

Nope.

With one faxed message to the NBA office reading simply “I’m back,” MJ donned a No. 45 and hopped back on an NBA hardwood.

But playing baseball for a year and a half would leave anyone rusty, and that was apparent in his first few games back. Then the Bulls traveled to Madison Square Garden and MJ reminded Big Apple fans what they had missed. Spike Lee coined it the “Double Nickel” and it will forever be the sole game from Michael’s abbreviated 1995 season that anyone remembers (aside from Nick Anderson).

5. “Midair Hand Switch” in the NBA Finals

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Like “The Shot,” you’ve definitely seen a tongue-wagging MJ make this move in NBA promos. The context makes it even better.

Magic and the Lakers were no longer Showtime at this point, and Vlade Divac wasn’t even an aging and hobbled Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But the Lakers surprised everyone and made the Finals, then beat the favored Bulls in Game 1, despite a 36-point, 12-assist, 8-rebound game from Michael (Magic had a triple-double). In Game 2, Phil Jackson had the longer Scottie Pippen flummox Magic, which allowed MJ to do his thing and provide the play of the year—and perhaps the layup of the century.

The Lakers didn’t win a single game after that, as Jordan captured the first of his six crowns.

4. “God disguised as Michael Jordan”

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It was Jordan’s second season, one where he spent most of his time pissed off at Bulls management, who made the antsy competitor wait longer than he felt was necessary to recuperate from a broken foot. But MJ finally got his chance with eight regular season games left, and the Bulls barely made the playoffs, matched up against the defending champion Celtics in the first round.

In Game 2, Jordan went nuclear, unleashing all that pent-up frustration at his extended convalescence on the C’s in an overtime loss. He finished with an NBA-record 63 points on an absurd 22-of-41 from the field, and 19-of-21 at the charity stripe. He’s still the only modern player to drop that many points in a playoff game, and the NBA MVP at the time, Larry Bird, summed the performance up after the game when he said, “I think it's just God disguised as Michael Jordan.”

3. The “Shrug Game”

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As time passes, we sometimes forget important details. Leading up to the 1992 Finals, many were eager to compare Portland’s smooth off-guard, Clyde Drexler, with the defending MVP and Finals MVP. As has been shown time and again, it fueled the GOAT’s greatness.

In Game 1, MJ went Steph Curry on the Blazers, swishing six 3-pointers in a record 35-point first half. After a last triple, Jordan turned to Magic Johnson, who was commentating from midcourt, and simply shrugged. Even he couldn’t believe what he was doing.

2. The “Flu Game”

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Flu is a misnomer; it was actually bad pizza, but everyone chalked it up to the flu at the time. It happened between Games 4 and 5 of the 1997 Finals, when the Bulls were staying in Utah. Jordan woke up the day of the game and was experiencing flu-like symptoms. He was dehydrated and running a temperature, and you could see it on his face. But the series was even at 2-2, and there was no way he was going to miss Game 5.

He played 44 gut-wrenching, literally, minutes and put up a line that’s still remarkable over 20 years later: 38 points (13-of-27 shooting) seven rebounds, five assists, three steals, a block, and a much-deserved 90-88 win. The Bulls went on to capture their second straight title and Jordan’s fifth in Game 6 when he was at full capacity, but his heroic fight in a crucial Game 5 is almost mythology at this point; it would be hard to believe if we hadn’t seen it with our own eyes.

1. “The Last Shot”

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It was his final game in a Bulls uniform, and most diehards consider it his final game, full stop. Yes, Jordan hit actual buzzer-beaters in big moments, like “The Shot.”  Yes, Utah’s Byron Russell is still smarting after Jordan slightly pushed him on his crossover to get free for the game-sealing bucket.

But it was Game 6 of the 1998 Finals, in a second consecutive meeting between the Bulls and the Jazz. And with under a minute remaining, disaster appeared to strike: John Stockton’s 3-pointer put the Jazz up 3 with 41 seconds left. But after a timeout,  MJ drove for a layup, then stripped Karl Malone of the ball on the other end.

The Bulls spread the floor and Michael added one more masterful moment to his career with a crossover and jumper that’s as iconic as any other image from his career.

However, there were still 5.2 seconds left in the game, and John Stockton got a pretty good look at a 3 from the top of the key. But it felt like destiny after MJ’s shot ripped twine, and Stockton’s attempt rimmed out. He finished with 45 points on a ho-hum 15-of-35 shooting, but the game-sealing bucket in that moment pushes it to the top of his greatest games.

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