What happened after The Last Dance? This oral history looks back at the 1998-99 Chicago Bulls team that ushered in a new post-Jordan era.
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Good stuff in here.
And this is WOW...
Not that I have much of a desire to defend the Jerry's, and some of this will be hindsight but....
Duncan was never leaving San Antonio, and Corey hints at it by saying "I don't remember Tim Duncan coming in". I think Tim gave Orlando a listening to, but otherwise went right back to SAS, where he spent his career as we all know.
The other three guys hadn't proved anything (0 All-Star appearances) and I could totally see low ball offers to them.
We know Krause was in love with McGrady as he tried to trade Pippen for a draft pick to draft him. Here, I feel it would be Reinsdorf who would have limited the deal. As we know, Reinsdorf loved to personally negotiate all deals, so to him he see a three year pro, who's made improvements, but hasn't hit All-Star stride yet, thus I could see the lower offer coming in. A mistake of course if true, given knowing what McGrady's numbers were in Orlando/Houston.
Tim Thomas is actually a good one to whiff on. You were basically paying him for his 5 game post season appearance in 2000 where he stepped up his game. As we all know, Tim Thomas produced in his contract years, then disappeared. In any sense, are you really going to pay a lot of money to guy averaging 11 ppg in the regular season?
I also don't remember the Bulls going after Jermaine O'Neal. He wasn't a part of the 2000 free agency squad. He signed a 4 year deal with Portland in 99 actually. So anything going on would have had to be a trade. Jermaine was stuck on Portland's bench, and number wise, hadn't proved anything. I do remember people just waiting for him to break out, he was able to do that in Indiana.
The player missing from this is Eddie Jones, who was an All-Star in 99-00, averaging 20 ppg on a playoff team. Now if they lowballed him, probably why he went to Miami.
This whole analysis by me does ignore the Jordan shadow that still seems to haunt some players to this day. I figure that has to be fading though with players now in the league who weren't even born when Jordan was playing.
