I remember when Jordan rules were implemented. It happened after Jordan scored 59 in 1988 against the pistons, the greatest scoring performance that I have ever witnessed. He torched two elite defenders in Rodman and Dumars. . After that, Daley had enough. He told his pistons that Jordan would be doubled and tripled every time he gets the ball, fouled hard, and to force the ball to other players. Daley basically flipped it. The defense before that for most teams was that Jordan was going to get his, but limit the other players. But Daley realized that Jordan could single handedly win games, so in comes the jordan rules.

During those Jordan rules games , Jordan was mostly held to under 30, and the bulls lost because no other player could really score. Scottie would often disappear in those games , and Had yet to totally mature as a player. That’s when it was realized that pippen was going to have to rise up as a superstar in order for the bulls to win, because the pistons were going to hound Jordan in every game.

Pippen matured, and turned into one of the greatest forwards to ever play the game, and Jordan and pippen formed the greatest duo in NBA history. They got past the pistons , and the rest is history


Giannis is facing a similar obstacle. The raptors introduced a wall defense ( a zone though) and Miami has perfected it. They have a person at every point in the paint , so he can’t spin out of it, he can’t hook shot out of it, so the only thing he can try is to raise up bully style with two hands . That doesn’t work when other forwards like Bam are just as strong, and if he gets fouled, he shoots only 60 something percent at the line. Just like Jordan couldn’t figure out Jordan rules , because it was just all focused on him, Giannis can’t get past this by himself. Another superstar needs to come about.

And that player is Khris Middleton. If he does not become Pippen, Bucks will not win it all. It’s just pure science. He disappeared just like pippen used to disappear against the pistons. However, pippen rose up, can Khris do the same thing?