Michael Jordan was prepared to sign one-year deal with Bulls after 1998-99 season

Michael Jordan's The Last Dance delved into the Chicago Bulls' 1997-98 team parting ways after winning their sixth NBA championship. The later episodes featured Jerry Krause talking about coach Phil Jackson leaving the Bulls and Jordan refusing to play without him. However, in The Last Dance, Jordan revealed that he would have been ready to sign a one-year deal with the Bulls if they asked him to. 

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Could Michael Jordan have stayed to play another season for the Chicago Bulls?

In the documentary, Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf talked about the difficulty in keeping their championship team together. The prices for all the Bulls players would go up, and the team would have trouble holding on to all of them. After being told of Reinsdorf's words, Jordan revealed that if there was a chance, he was willing to sign a one-year deal with the team. Jordan was aware of all the monetary issues but was willing to try for a seventh NBA title. He stated that if Krause wanted to keep the team together, nearly everyone would have agreed. 

Jordan talked about the start of the season, where Krause had already stated that Jackson would not return, which was enough for the team to know it was their last year in Chicago. He believed that they could have held onto that statement and not made it at the beginning of the 1997-1998 season. He revealed that if Steve Kerr and Dennis Rodman were given a chance to re-sign for a year, they would do so.

Jordan then added that he would also have been ready to play another season. He was sure that Phil Jackson would also have agreed, though Scottie Pippen would have taken more time to agree with the team. However, Jordan was confident that Pippen would not miss an opportunity to play if all of them were still together. 

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While nothing can be said for sure, many fans believe that the team would have continued to win if they had not broken up. Last month, Rodman also stated that their team could have 'easily' won a seventh title. Following Jordan's last statement, fans took to Twitter to discuss their last season, and if Jordan would have seven rings by the time he retired. 

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