Beating Michael Jordan in a playoff series in the 1990s was a near-impossible task, but Shaquille O’Neal did pull it off. Jordan won 25 of his last 26 playoff series with the Chicago Bulls, with the only defeat coming at the hands of O’Neal’s Orlando Magic in 1995. It’s a fact the big man is still proud of to this day, and he brought it up during an appearance on expediTIously with Tip T.I. Harris.
“I’m the last guy to beat MJ,” O’Neal said. “I win thousands of dollars in all barber shops… Listen, Mike is the GOAT, but I’m the last one to beat him. And then they always say, ‘Well, that’s when he wore 45.’ I don’t give a f*** what he wore. He was on the court. So, I was the last guy to beat him.”
The Magic’s beating the Bulls in six games in the Eastern Conference Semifinals is often discounted because Jordan had just come back from retirement. He had, of course, walked away from basketball after winning his third-straight title in 1993.
Jordan went off to play baseball, but returned to the Bulls in March 1995. While he had worn No. 23 for all but one game of his professional basketball career at that point, he chose to wear No. 45, his number in baseball.
Jordan would only end up playing 17 regular-season games for the Bulls in 1994-95. He wasn’t quite at his best, as one would imagine, and finished with averages of 26.9 points, 6.9 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 1.8 steals, and 0.8 blocks per game in the campaign.
When the playoffs came around, though, it seemed like business as usual. Jordan had 48 points in Game 1 of the Bulls’ first-round series against the Charlotte Hornets. They’d beat the Hornets in four games to set up the clash with the Magic.
Game 1 against the Magic would prove to be very different from the one against the Hornets. Jordan had just 19 points as the Bulls lost 94-91. He switched back to No. 23 after the game and got back to dominating.
Jordan racked up 38 points in Game 2 to tie the series at 1-1. He then had 40 in Game 3, but the Bulls still fell down 2-1. They would tie the series again at 2-2 after Game 4, but then lost the last two games to get bounced out.
Jordan averaged 31.0 points, 6.5 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 2.5 steals, and 1.8 blocks per game in the series. He was great, but not quite his usual devastating self. Jordan had averaged 41.0 points against the Phoenix Suns in the 1993 NBA Finals, and this was clearly not the same player.
O’Neal couldn’t care less, though. He had averaged 24.3 points, 13.2 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 1.0 steals, and 2.0 blocks per game in the series to gain bragging rights over Jordan.
Unfortunately for O’Neal, he wouldn’t go on to achieve ultimate glory, as the Houston Rockets swept the Magic in the 1995 NBA Finals. Despite the nature of that defeat, they’d come back strong the next year.
The Magic went 60-22 in 1995-96 and lost just one playoff game en route to the Eastern Conference Finals. Standing between them and another Finals appearance were Jordan and the Bulls. There would be no repeat of 1995, though.
This was a different Bulls team and a different Jordan. They set a new NBA record by going 72-10 in the regular season and gained revenge on the Magic by sweeping them in the Conference Finals. Unlike their opponents, they would finish the job, too, beating the Seattle SuperSonics in six games in the 1996 NBA Finals.
The Bulls would go on to three-peat again by winning titles in 1997 and 1998. Jordan would retire for the second time in 1998, and while he came back again in 2001, he never played in the playoffs again. He would retire for the third and final time in 2003.
While O’Neal does have the honor of being part of the last team to beat Jordan in the playoffs, he did ultimately come out second best. It’s no wonder then that the big man shows him so much respect.
During this episode, O’Neal named Jordan among the top five players who inspired him the most, along with Julius Erving, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Stephen Curry. Curry was the only one from these five not to make his list of the 10 greatest players of all time.
