Bulls Insider: Michael Jordan Was Mad at Scottie Pippen for Delaying '97 Surgery

Ahead of the debut of Michael Jordan's The Last Dance documentary series Sunday on ESPN, several Chicago Bulls writers shared behind-the-scene stories about MJ's last year in Chicago, including an issue he had with Scottie Pippen.

In the article written by Mark Medina of USA Today, Sam Smith of Bulls.com noted that Jordan wasn't happy that Pippen delayed foot surgery in 1997, which caused him to miss the start of the 1997-98 season:

"[General manager] Jerry Krause is eager to move on, and he's not completely wrong in that sense. Basically his philosophy was, 'We're a really old team at the end. If I have a chance to add a great young star, I should do that.' So he arranges a deal with Boston to trade Pippen for [Tracy] McGrady and a couple of other picks.

"[Owner] Jerry Reinsdorf says, 'We're not doing that. We have another chance to win and we'll ride this out until we can't.' He overrules the deal. Pippen learns about it and gets [ticked] off. He postpones his surgery he was supposed to have in June after the '97 Finals. He waits for it until September. So he won't be able to play the first half of next season. That infuriates Michael and [head coach] Phil [Jackson]. As mad as they were at Krause, they're mad at Scottie, too, because the Bulls said, 'Let's stick around another year.'"

Pippen missed 38 games that season, but he returned to average 19.1 points, 5.8 assists and 5.2 rebounds per game, and he played a significant role in the Bulls beating the Utah Jazz in the NBA Finals for the second consecutive season and winning their third straight championship overall.

The Last Dance will focus on the 1997-98 Bulls, which was the final season their dynasty spearheaded by Jordan, Pippen, Jackson and others was still together.

Jordan retired to try his hand at baseball after the Bulls won their third straight championship in 1993, but after two seasons away, he returned for the 1995-96 season. Chicago went 72-10 that season and 69-13 the next season, winning the championship both times.

While MJ's Bulls made it look easy at times, that wasn't always the case in actuality. The Bulls went "just" 62-20 in 1997-98 with Pippen missing nearly half the season, and they were nearly eliminated by the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals but managed to pull it out in seven games before beating Utah in the Finals.

After the Bulls three-peated for a second time, Jordan retired again, Pippen was traded to the Houston Rockets, Jackson took one year away from coaching before returning to coach the Los Angeles Lakers, and Dennis Rodman signed with the Lakers in free agency after the Bulls released him.

That marked the end of the Bulls' dynasty, and they would go six straight seasons without making the playoffs after those departures. To this day, the Bulls haven't been back to the NBA Finals and have reached the Eastern Conference Finals only once.

The fact that Chicago won a championship in 1998 may mean that the Bulls made the right decision in hanging on to Pippen despite his decision to delay surgery, but it is fair to wonder if trading him for McGrady may have produced the same result while also keeping the Bulls competitive in the years that followed.

The Toronto Raptors ended up selecting McGrady ninth overall in the 1997 NBA draft, but the Bulls and Celtics reportedly had conversations about Chicago sending Pippen and center Luc Longley to Boston for the third- and sixth-overall picks in the 1997 draft, with one of those picks being McGrady.

Boston ended up taking eventual NBA Finals MVP Chauncey Billups with the No. 3 pick in that draft, so perhaps he would have been part of the deal as well.

With Billups and a seven-time All-Star in McGrady, it isn't outside the realm of possibility that the Bulls could have been contenders even after Jordan, Pippen, Jackson and Rodman were gone.

McGrady averaged only 7.0 points per game as a rookie, though, so the three-peat may not have come to fruition had Krause been allowed to move forward with the deal.