EVER SINCE THE Golden State Warriors began to rack up a relentless win streak, the big question was whether they could break the 20-year Chicago Bulls’ record.
In 1996, Phil Jackson’s iconic team featuring the holy trinity of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman, claimed their fourth championship in six seasons after going 72-10 for the regular season.
With just four games to go, the Warriors are 69-9 and have lost two of their last three games.
To break the record, they need to go unbeaten from now until the end of the campaign, which wraps up next week.
Tonight, it could all unravel for them as the San Antonio Spurs visit Oakland. And they will be keen to play party poopers.
Even if they fail to win tonight, the Spurs will get another chance on Sunday when the Warriors come to Texas – where they lost by eight points recently.
The Spurs have enjoyed a terrific season too and are 65-12, the second-best side overall. They’ve played 39 of those games at home and are still to be beaten there.
They’ll will fancy their chances of a possible championship too – their fifth in the last thirteen years.
Going back two decades, the Bulls accomplished something no team had previously done – they won 70 games. They hit the magic number with four straight wins and closed out the regular season with two victories from their final three games.
Even with Steph Curry’s super-human performances, the Warriors have buckled recently. There was the unexpected loss to the Timberwolves while the Celtics got the better of them too. Even their victory over the Utah Jazz came after overtime.
The Warriors’ run has led to inevitable comparisons but the Bulls’ key players from that glorious side are adamant they were better.
Earlier this week, Pippen claimed his Bulls team from 1996 would sweep the Warriors in a hypothetical series.
Bulls in four (games). I don’t think we’d take a night off. I think my size and length would bother Curry a little bit”.
Pippen added that he’d limit Curry, whose points-per-game average for the season is 30, to less than twenty.
Rodman was similarly dismissive.
“The game has changed so much. I don’t think that Golden State can even last or even come close to even playing with us in the ’90s because, back then, you could actually kick peoples’ ass, you could throw punches, you could do all the stuff like that. Now, you can’t do anything. No, I don’t think they can beat us.”
The most interesting aspect to the debate is that the Warriors are coached by Steve Kerr, who was part of that 1996 Bulls’ roster.
He’s become increasingly jaded by the question of which team is better but when the Warriors were on their way to claiming last year’s championship (his first as a coach), he did admit the Warriors lacked one crucial element that the Bulls had.
“We had this guy named Michael Jordan on that team. That year, I think we were 41-3. So if we can go 21-1 the next 22 games, come talk to me.
What I remember that year is there were about 10 games where Michael just decided, ‘We’re going to win,’” Kerr said. “And every other team on Earth would have lost those 10 games. And Michael Jordan was … there’ll never be another one. Nobody has ever come close, and I don’t think anybody ever will. He wanted to break that Lakers record of 69 wins, so he decided we would do it, so we did it. There’s only one Michael.”
And how does Jordan feel about all of this?
He’s remained relatively silent on the topic though according to the Warriors’ Klay Thompson, he has little issue with the reigning champions creating history.
Still, it would appear unlikely at this stage allowing that glorious Bulls side of 1996 to remain immortal.
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