© Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
Kenny Smith claims Bulls would not have beaten his Rockets even if Michael Jordan didn't retire
Michael Jordan's first retirement in 1993 opened the door for numerous teams to replace the Chicago Bulls at the top of the NBA pyramid. One of those teams was Houston, who won back-to-back titles in 1994 and 1995 behind the stellar play of Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon.
A key component of that team was current NBA analyst Kenny "The Jet" Smith, who was the team's starting point guard. While some say that the Rockets would never win those titles had Jordan not retired, Smith quickly shot down such assertions and even went as far as to state that the Rockets would have "smacked" Jordan's Bulls at that time.
Size difference
Speaking to Stephen A. Smith, the Jet claimed that they certainly would have stopped the Bulls' title run had they met in the NBA Finals. Smith remarked that it's fortunate that the Rockets and the Bulls never met during that time as it would have been heartbreaking for Smith to stain the NBA Finals record of Jordan—who was his teammate at North Carolina.
"Yes, we would've beat the Chicago Bulls, I feel," Smith said. "I'm glad we didn't beat them because it would've hurt Michael's legacy in the debate with LeBron."
Smith explained that their frontcourt, led by Olajuwon, would have been too much to handle for the Bulls' big men.
"The reason I thought we would've beat them is because they were too small for us. There was no Horace Grant. Dennis Rodman wasn't there yet. So who's going to guard Dream? No. Impossible. No way, no how. We would've beaten the Michael Jordan Bulls because they were too little. We would've smacked them."
Can't bet against His Airness
Perhaps the Jet has a valid point. The 1993-1994 Bulls still had Horace Grant, but their centers—albeit all 7-footers—were limited defensively. It wouldn't be a stretch to say Olajuwon would have had his way with any of the Bulls' big men. The 1994-1995 squad no longer had Grant as he moved to the Orlando Magic. Grant's absence would have made it even harder for the Bulls to contain Dream's dominance.
However, Michael Jordan was a one-man army. Could Olajuwon have been stopped with some combination of Longley and Bill Wennington? Probably not. In the same breath, could the Rockets stop MJ? That's highly unlikely. Houston was a good defensive team, and Olajuwon was the anchor, but Jordan's offensive arsenal was always a few steps ahead of everyone else. His speed, strength and agility made it almost impossible for any single defender to stop him.
So while the "what if" scenario is always fun to think about, Jordan would likely have been too much for the Rockets.
