The 1998 NBA Finals was the championship round of the 1998 playoffs of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Finish of the 1997–98 NBA season.
The Eastern Conference champion Chicago Bulls played against the Western Conference champion Utah Jazz, with all the Jazz holding home-court edge together with the initial two games in Salt Lake City. In a repeat of the preceding year’s Finals, the Bulls won the series 4 games to two for their third consecutive NBA title and their sixth in eight seasons. Michael Jordan was voted the NBA Finals MVP of the series (he also had won the award the last five occasions the Bulls won the Finals: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, and 1997). This would be his sixth NBA championship and sixth Finals MVP award in six full basketball seasons. Until 2014, it had been the final successive Finals rematch between two groups.
The 1998 Finals garnered the highest Nielsen TV ratings in NBA history at 18.7, and also surpassed the Nielsen ratings for the 1998 World Series, marking the first time that the NBA had a higher score in its own championship round than of Major League Baseball’s championship round.
Until 2012, this has been the latest closing played entirely outside Texas and California.
The show marked the first time since 1989 the exact same two teams met in the Finals in consecutive years. The Jazz earned the league’s best record by virtue of sweeping the two-game regular season series with the Bulls despite the two teams finishing at 62 wins. In the playoffs, the Jazz were pushed to the brink by the Houston Rockets before winning Game 5 at Utah, then overcame Rookie of the Year Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs 4–1. Then they swept the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals. The Bulls swept the New Jersey Nets and then took out the Charlotte Hornets in five, but it took seven games to overcome the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals.
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