It's difficult to determine the greatest Michael Jordan season performance among his 5 MVP seasons, 11 scoring titles, six championship rings, 1 Defense Player of the Year award, and his dazzling rookie season of 1984-85. In his rookie season of 1984-85, he led the NBA in scoring with 2,313 points and remains the last rookie guard to be selected to play in the All-Star game. Would it be his final season with the Chicago Bulls in 1997-98, where he would help bring them to their sixth and last NBA championship title? How about the first time he and the Bulls won their first-ever NBA championship in 1990-91? Where they finally got over the hump of their rivals, the Detroit "Bad Boy" Pistons, in the Eastern Conference Finals to defeat Magic Johnson's Lakers in the NBA finals, 4-1. It can arguably be his season of 1991-92 where he helped the Bulls repeat as champions over the Clyde Drexler and the talented Trailblazers or the 72-10 season of 1995-96.
In both seasons, Jordan won the league's MVP award, was named 1st-team All-NBA and All-NBA Defense, and became the NBA's scoring champion. They are identical to his 1987-88 season except for one thing: He wasn't named the NBA Defense Player of the Year in 92 or 96.
In 1987-88, Michael Jordan became the first player in NBA history to be named the league's Most Valuable Player and the league's Defense Player of the Year in the same season. He would also win his second straight NBA scoring title, which would be a part of a streak of 10 consecutive scoring titles skipping over 1994 and 1995. Michael Jordan also went on to win the MVP award for the All-Star game by scoring 40 points and leading the Eastern Conference All-Stars to victory over the Western Conference All-Stars, 138-133. He finished first in nearly every other statistical category in the 1987-88 season. Jordan was the 1987-88 seasonal leader in steals, steals per game, points per game, field goals made, and free throws made. He was even finished inside the top 15 leaders in blocks that season in which the thirteen leaders ahead of him were all either centers or forwards—making him the leader in blocks among guards in 1987-88. His steal percentage was second behind John Stockton, and his defensive rating was sixth in the league, at 101.5. Before that season, critics didn't consider him a complete basketball player who lacked defense and only possessed flash on the offensive side.
Michael Jordan won the Defensive Player of the Year award over other notable defenders like Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, Mark Eaton, Dennise Rodman, and Michael Cooper. He was named the league's Most Valuable Player over the likes of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, who were the league's apex predators and had their respected franchises, the Lakers and Celtics, at the top of the NBA food chain throughout the 1980s. His efforts helped the Chicago Bulls produce a 50-32 record, the ninth-best record in the league that season. It would be the first the Bulls gained a fifty-win record since the 1973-74 season. He also helped the Bulls improve to become the third-rated defense in the NBA and ranked first in the league for the fewest points allowed per game in 1987-88.
The Bulls also made it past the first round of the playoffs for the first since 1981 behind Jordan's playoff series stat line against the Cleveland Cavaliers of 50 points in game 1, 55 points in game 2, 38 points in game 3, 44 points in Game 4, and 39 points in Game 5 to help the Bulls defeat the Cavaliers in five games. In that series, Michael Jordan would become the first player in NBA history to produce two back-to-back 50-point games in the playoffs. They would eventually lose to the upstart Detroit Pistons in the second round. That season of 1987-88 marked the beginning of bigger things to come for Chicago and the official breakout of Michael Jordan from superstar to living legend.
That season, the Bulls played through the season with rookies Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant in their development stages, and Charles Oakley was the second-best player on the team. Oakley led the team and the NBA in total rebounds during the 1987-88 season. He was also the second-highest scorer for the Bulls that season with 1,014 total points, the only other player on the team that surpassed a thousand total points. Even an old-timer, Artis Gilmore, was on the Bulls roster, making his return to Chicago after being the face of the Chicago Bulls during the 1970s and cementing their success in making it to the playoffs year after year during that decade. While working with all of this, Michael Jordan produced his second career-best year in terms of total points scored with 2,868 total points and points per game average with a 35.0 points per game average. It would be a career-best year for Jordan regarding total steals in a season, with 259 in 1987-88.
He also was the team leader in blocks with 131, the second of only two times in his career when he had 100-plus blocks in a season (125 blocks in 1986-87). This wouldn't be Phil Jackson's Bulls until three seasons later. The Bulls were still under second-year head coach Doug Collins, and his game strategy at the time always started with giving Michael the ball and letting him make things happen like no other player before or since. Michael Jordan was a one-man army in 1987-88 and did what he could for the Bulls against some of the greatest competition he has ever faced in his career. Magic Johnson's Lakers, Larry Bird's Celtics, Dominique Wilkins' Hawks, the Detroit "Bad Boy" Pistons, and Utah's fabulous duo of Karl Malone and John Stockton, along with master shot-blocker Mark Eaton, were beginning to come into their own. Wherever Michael Jordan went, the Chicago Bulls went as well.
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