The1997–98 NBA season was the 52nd season of theNational Basketball Association (NBA). The season ended with theChicago Bulls winning their third straight championship and sixth in the last eight years, beating theUtah Jazz 4 games to 2 in the1998 NBA Finals. It also marked the departure ofMichael Jordan and the end of the dynasty for the Chicago Bulls.
This was the last time that both NBA andNHL regular seasons ended on the same day.
The1998 NBA All-Star Game was played atMadison Square Garden. However, theSlam Dunk Contest was not held, due to the risk of player injuries, lack of new dunking tricks and lack of big-name players in recent competitions. Instead, a2Ball competition was held.[1]Los Angeles Lakers guardKobe Bryant became the youngest All-Star starter at age 19. The East beat the West, 135–114 for the third consecutive year, as Michael Jordan won his third All-Star MVP.[2][3]
The Washington Bullets were renamed the "Wizards". They began the season atUS Airways Arena, then in December, they played their first game at the MCI Center (later Verizon Center, nowCapital One Arena) during this season.[4][5][6]
Due to the demolition ofThe Omni and the construction of the newPhilips Arena, the Atlanta Hawks split home games betweenGeorgia Tech'sAlexander Coliseum (Their original home where they played for four seasons when they moved to Atlanta in 1968.) and theGeorgia Dome.[7]
Golden State Warriors swingmanLatrell Sprewell made headlines by choking Warriors head coachP. J. Carlesimo during practice on December 1, 1997. Sprewell was ultimately suspended for 68 games, at the time the longest in NBA history. Sprewell would be traded to theNew York Knicks in the off-season that followed.[8][9][10]
Michael Jordan passedKareem Abdul-Jabbar as the all-time leader in points scored in the NBA Playoffs. The record stood for nearly 20 years until it was broken byLeBron James in 2017.
The Utah Jazz and the Chicago Bulls shared the league's best record at 62–20, and met each other in the NBA Finals. The Jazz had home-court advantage by virtue of the head-to-head match-up (the Jazz won the season series 2–0).
Two new records were set in Game 3 of the NBA Finals: biggest margin of victory (42 points) and fewest points scored in an NBA Finals game (54) in the Bulls' rout of the Jazz.
Following head coachPhil Jackson's decision to not return to the Bulls,Michael Jordan announced his second retirement from the NBA during the following offseason. This was Jordan's final season with the Chicago Bulls. Scottie Pippen was traded for Roy Rogers (who was released in February 1999) and a conditional second-round draft pick from the Houston Rockets. Dennis Rodman was not re-signed either, leading to the end of an era for the Bulls and the NBA.
On February 27, theIndiana Pacers defeated thePortland Trail Blazers 124–59, marking the first time in NBA history that one team scored more than twice as many points as its opponent.[14][15]
All the Western Conference teams who missed the playoffs had 55 or more losses. Four of them lost more than 62 games. The ninth-placedSacramento Kings finished the season with a 27–55 record, losing nineteen of their last twenty games. The Kings finished fourteen games behind the #8 seededHouston Rockets, who finished with a 41–41 record, while the tenth-placedDallas Mavericks ended with a 20–62 record. All the Eastern Conference teams who missed the playoffs had 31 or more wins except for theToronto Raptors, who finished with a 16–66 record.
Violet Palmer andDee Kantner became the first two female officials in NBA history (as well as any of the four major professional sports leagues). Kantner would be fired following the2001–02 season, while Palmer would go on to have long 19-year career before retiring after the2015–16 season.
TheGolden State Warriors changed their logo and uniforms, changing their colors to navy, orange and gold.
TheIndiana Pacers changed their uniforms adding pinstripes with side panels to their jerseys and shorts.
TheNew Jersey Nets changed their logo and uniforms, replacing blue with navy to go with red and grey to their color scheme, added side panels to their jerseys and shorts.
TheNew York Knicks changed their home uniforms, adding blue side panels to their jerseys and shorts. Meanwhile, the blue alternate road uniforms with black side panels to their jerseys and shorts they wore for the past two seasons became their primary road jersey.
ThePhiladelphia 76ers changed their logo and uniforms, replacing their red, white and blue colors with black and gold.
The Washington Bullets changed their name to theWashington Wizards, and got a new logo and new uniforms. They scrap the red, white and blue colors to blue, old gold and black. Also in December that season, they moved into their new home arena called the MCI Center (later the Verizon Center, nowCapital One Arena).
Teams in bold advanced to the next round. The numbers to the left of each team indicate the team's seeding in its conference, and the numbers to the right indicate the number of games the team won in that round. The division champions are marked by an asterisk.Home court advantage does not necessarily belong to the higher-seeded team, but instead the team with the better regular season record; teams enjoying the home advantage are shown in italics.
