THE LAST DANCE

Michael Jordan is left to begin the 1997-98 season without his injured sidekick Scottie Pippen, whose contract dispute with the Bulls' front office reaches a fever pitch as the team gets off to one of the worst starts of its championship runs.

Once a key member of the hated Detroit Pistons "Bad Boys" championship teams that brutalized Michael Jordan, Dennis Rodman is virtually all Jordan can count on in the early months of the 1997-98 season.

In what management insists is Phil Jackson's final season in Chicago as head coach of the Bulls, he continues to seem like the only one who can steer this unique, singular collection of talent to another title.

As Michael Jordan's fame peaked to unparalleled levels in the early 1990s in the wake of consecutive NBA titles and a starring role on the Olympic Dream Team, his image as "Air Jordan" made him a profoundly significant cultural figure.

With Michael Jordan's extraordinary fame came extraordinary scrutiny, and in 1993, it all felt like it came to a head with the Chicago Bulls' pursuit of a third straight title shadowed by question marks about Jordan's gambling.

As Michael Jordan pushes his teammates hard for a sixth NBA title, his intensity and hunger for basketball dominance is in stark contrast to his mindset in October 1993, when he stunned the world by walking away from the game.

Michael Jordan would famously use even the smallest slight imaginable to motivate himself against an opponent. And when his NBA comeback in 1995 fell short in the playoffs, he worked harder than ever to return to form.

In May of 1998, nearly a year after Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls fought past Utah in the NBA Finals, their path to a sixth title only gets more challenging, as a brutal seven-game series against the Indiana Pacers decides the Eastern Conference.

In June of 1998, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls face the Utah Jazz in an NBA Finals rematch, looking for a sixth championship and a perfect ending for "The Last Dance."