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.

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.

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.