By June 1998, the Chicago Bulls were chasing history. Phil Jackson’s “Last Dance” season had the team gunning for its second three-peat of the decade, but the Utah Jazz, led by Karl Malone and John Stockton, pushed the series to the brink. After Chicago took a 3-2 series lead, the teams headed to Salt Lake City’s Delta Center on June 14, 1998, for what would become one of the most replayed sequences in NBA history.
The Jazz led for most of the fourth quarter and held an 86-83 advantage with under a minute remaining. Jordan first cut the deficit, scoring in the paint to make it 86-85. Then, as Utah tried to work the clock, Jordan reached in from behind and stripped the ball from Karl Malone in the post, a steal that has become nearly as famous as what followed. Jordan brought the ball up himself, faced off against defender Bryon Russell at the top of the key, drove right, then pulled back with a crossover that created just enough separation. With 5.2 seconds left, he rose and buried a jump shot from the top of the arc. The Bulls held on to win 87-86, clinching their sixth NBA championship in eight years and completing a second three-peat.
Jordan finished the game with 45 points, an extraordinary output on a night when little else was working for Chicago’s offense. He was named Finals MVP for the sixth time, an award he won in every trip to the championship round he ever made. The shot, forever known simply as “The Last Shot,” turned out to be exactly that: Jordan would not play another game for the Bulls. He retired for the second time that off-season amid organizational upheaval, as Jackson, general manager Jerry Krause, and the front office parted ways with much of the championship core. Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, and Jackson himself all moved on as well, closing the book on one of the greatest dynasties in American sports history.
For Chicago, the image of Jordan holding his follow-through, arm extended, as the shot fell through the net has become the defining visual of the Bulls’ 1990s dominance, reproduced on posters, murals, and merchandise across the city ever since. It capped a run of six championships in the decade, with the only interruption being Jordan’s brief retirement to play minor league baseball between 1993 and 1995. The Utah series itself remains a point of pride for Jazz fans who pushed the Bulls to six games twice, in 1997 and 1998, without ever winning a title of their own.
Nearly three decades later, “The Last Shot” endures as shorthand for clutch performance in American sports, a moment that turned a jump shot in Salt Lake City into permanent Chicago folklore.
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