Michael Jordan Got Complacent For About 3 Weeks During Final Season With Bulls In 1997-98: ‘I Stopped Working Out, I Got Used To Sleeping In, Taking Shortcuts’

NBA legend Michael Jordan got complacent for about three weeks during his final season with the Chicago Bulls in 1997-98. 

“Now it’s easy for complacency to set in,” Jordan said in April 1998. “It’s human nature. It happened to me. I stopped working out for about 3 1/2 weeks this season. I got used to sleeping in, taking shortcuts. And it affected me on the court. Human nature. You don’t even know you’ve done anything until you see signs in your game. I told Phil Jackson one morning, ‘I’ve been taking shortcuts, yet I’m expecting the same results. It can’t happen that way.’ So I went back to working out, doing the things necessary. And I feel better physically, and I feel good about me as a person. I’m getting up at eight every day instead of nine. I’m not getting soft.

“You can’t get soft in this league. The young guys will run you right out of the gym. It took me some time to evaluate my game, to see that, hey, we’re losing games we shouldn’t, that I wasn’t doing my job in the fourth quarter. We never should have lost to Indiana there, to Utah twice, to Portland here. We were soft in the third quarter and the third quarter used to be our quarter. We used to kill teams. And now we’ve gotten that back. The way we’ve been playing since the All-Star break, that’s how we used to play.”

Jordan played in all 82 games in 1997-98. He averaged 28.7 points, 5.8 rebounds, 3.5 assists, 1.7 steals and 0.5 blocks and won his fifth MVP and 10th scoring title. 

The Bulls went 62-20 in 1997-98, which was Jordan’s, Jackson’s and Scottie Pippen‘s final season in Chicago.

General manager Jerry Krause said Jackson wouldn’t return as head coach in 1998-99 even if the Bulls went 82-0 and won the championship in 1997-98.

Chicago won the 1998 title in six games over the Utah Jazz. After the season, Jordan and Jackson retired, while Pippen was traded to the Houston Rockets. 

“We could have won seven,” Jordan said in The Last Dance doc. “I really believe that. We may not have, but man, just not to be able to try, that’s something that I just can’t accept. For whatever reason, I just can’t accept it.”

With the Bulls, Jordan won six championships, six Finals MVPs, five regular-season MVPs, 10 scoring titles, three steals titles and one Defensive Player of the Year Award. He’s arguably the top player in NBA history. 

Jordan has career averages of 30.1 points, 6.2 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 2.3 steals and 0.8 blocks with the Bulls and Washington Wizards. He’s first in NBA history in points per game, fourth in steals, fifth in field goals and second in player efficiency rating.

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