This is irrelevant,lebron lost season series during the regular season and eliminated those teams in the playoffs fukk outta here with this hypothetical non sense.The rockets were getting sonned by the same teams the bulls beat in the finals
91 swept by lakers in 1st round
92 didn't even make the playoffs
93 bounced by the sonics in the 2nd round
96 swept by the sonics in 2nd round
97 lost to utah in wcf
98 lost to utah in 1st round
If houston was good enough they should of made the finals at least once in the 6 years the bulls did but they instead lost to teams the bulls won the championship over.
Styles make fights. It just so happened Seattle had the Rosetta Stone to Houstons.
But guess what Houston had the Rosetta Stone 2 Phoenix style as well.......and Phoenix had the Stone 2 Seattle's.
Kenny Smith on Open Court himself spoke briefly of this interesting triangle in the West and how all 3 teams were grilling what side of the bracket they fell on come Playoff time bcuz they knew which matchup was the Achilles heal and which was playing the video game on easy mode.
In the Houston/Chicago matchup u have the case of Bill Cartwright being as flat footed and stationary a center as it gets going up against quite possibly the most nimble, agile and swift centers we ever seen. U gotta remember Hakeems game was patented with Soccer footwork in mind as that was his 1st sport, he would leave Cartwright in the dust making Hakeem more dominant than usual. This made Horace Grant have 2 double team more leaving Otis Thorpe 2 snatch as many rebounds as he wanted.
Mike himself told reporters and people around the sport he was glad Houston never got out the West. Vernon Maxwell bothered MJ as well as any defender has.
This trend played out literally the Xact same way each of those 6 times they met up reg season during the Bulls 3 peat.
Chicago eked out 1 struggle victory and that was it. A pattern this consistent isn't luck brotha this was routine.