The 1995-96 NBA season was legendary — and NBC was right in the middle of it.
Tuesday night, NBC is bringing back that vibe when legendary sports broadcasters Bob Costas, Doug Collins, Mike “Czar of the Telestrator” Fratello, Jim Gray, Hannah Storm, Isiah Thomas and P.J. Carlesimo return to NBC Sports in a special edition “throwback” Coast 2 Coast Tuesday broadcast. That crew will be on hand when Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs visit Tyrese Maxey and the Philadelphia 76ers. Costas, Collins and Fratello will call the game alongside courtside reporter Gray, and the NBA Showtime that precedes the game will feature Storm as studio host and Thomas and Carlesimo as studio analysts.
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What do we remember from that 1995-96 season? So very much, it was the peak of that NBA era.
72-win Chicago Bulls
The greatest team of all time.
No team in NBA history has won so many games (72-10) and capped it by winning an NBA championship. Nobody. (The 2015-16 Warriors won 73 games but blew a 3-1 Finals lead to LeBron James’s Cavaliers.)
That Bulls team featured MVP Michael Jordan, who averaged 30.4 points per game capping off his comeback, as well as Scottie Pippen (fifth in MVP voting and second in Defensive Player of the. Year voting that season), Dennis Rodman (14.9 rebounds per game and elite defense), Tony Kukoc winning Sixth Man of the Year, plus a veteran and impressive group of role players, which included a young sharpshooter out of Southern California by way of Arizona, Steve Kerr.
Jordan’s emotional title
Chicago won the 1996 NBA championship on Father’s Day, and this was Jordan’s first championship after his father’s death, which led to an iconic, tearful celebration on the locker room floor.
Magic Johnson’s Return
Magic Johnson abruptly and shockingly retired from basketball in 1991 after contracting AIDS.
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Four years later, for the 1995-96 season, Magic returned midseason and played 32 games for the Lakers, still averaging 14.6 points, 6.9 assists, and 5.7 rebounds per game, mostly coming off the bench.
Peak Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton in Seattle
Back in 1995-96, Seattle still had an NBA team — and a very good one. A 64-win SuperSonics team that reached the NBA Finals and pushed those 72-win Bulls harder than any other team in the postseason, taking them to six games.
Shawn Kemp led that team with 19.6 points a game, but we tuned in to see him dunk — no player in NBA history has been more of a highlight factory than Kemp.
That continued in the NBA Finals.
However, the player that really made this team go was The Glove, Gary Payton — 19.3 points a game while winning Defensive Player of the Year. He was locking people down on one end and was part of a high-flying offensive show on the other.
Toronto, Vancouver expansion seasons
This was the year the NBA came to Canada.
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The Toronto Raptors made their debut and started to win over what has become one of the largest and best fan bases in the NBA. Rookie of the Year Damon Stoudemire led that inaugural team.
On the West Coast, the Vancouver Grizzlies debuted, a team led in scoring by Greg Anthony and big men Benoit Benjamin and Bryant “Big Country” Reaves.
Unfortunately, the team would only spend six years in Vancouver, never making the playoffs, before a new owner, Michael Heisley, moved the team to Memphis, where there are no Grizzlies but the team has stayed.
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