The 1990s belonged to the Chicago Bulls. Led by Michael Jordan and anchored by the versatile brilliance of Scottie Pippen, they elevated basketball into something near mythology. Six titles. Two three-peats. A global cultural wave that redefined what it meant to dominate in sport.
Many years later, the Golden State Warriors’ modern dynasty emerged and also dominated their era. This brought about various debates on which dynasty was better.
Pippen’s take
Golden State’s run was historic. Four titles in eight years, a 73-win season, and the most revolutionary shooting backcourt the game has ever seen. But for Pip, the idea that Stephen Curry’s Warriors could sit at the same table as the Bulls teams of the ’90s simply doesn’t compute.
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“Come on, man, we are the greatest team,” Pippen said. “I’m going to tell you right here today, Golden State Warriors has had a great run, but they are nowhere in comparison to what the Bulls did in the ’90s. We controlled a whole decade.”
Pippen’s words came from a player who lived every second of the grind that built the Bulls’ dynasty, not just as a sidekick but as the glue, the defensive anchor, the point-forward prototype that stretched across all positions. Chicago’s run was complete dominance — something Golden State, despite its peaks, didn’t manage to sustain in the same way.
From 1991 to 1998, the Bulls won six championships in eight seasons. In the two years they didn’t, Jordan was either out of the league or still shaking off baseball rust. They had three seasons with over 65 wins, including the record-setting 72-10 campaign in 1995-96 — an achievement that stood unmatched until the Warriors’ 73-9 run in 2015-16. But Golden State’s season didn’t end in a championship. The Bulls did.
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Between 1990 and 1998, the Bulls posted a 555-193 regular-season record. During that span, they never lost an NBA Finals. Not once. The Warriors, for all their innovation and firepower, haven’t managed to own a decade in quite the same way. Injuries, roster churn, and internal tensions chipped away at their continuity.
Warriors vs Bulls
In the nine seasons since Steve Kerr took over as head coach in 2014, Golden State has missed the playoffs three times and lost two Finals. Their highest point — the 2015-16 regular season — came with a stunning Finals collapse, erasing the glow of the league’s best-ever win-loss record.
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For Chicago, that kind of falloff never existed. The apex was the standard. The thread Pippen pulled on doesn’t end at six rings. It continues into the what-ifs, the could-have-been, and the empire that might have extended even further if not for Jordan’s first retirement in 1993.
“Had M.J. not left, we probably could have ran off at least two to three more titles,” Pippen said.
In the 1993-94 season, with MJ gone, Pippen led the Bulls to 55 wins, earning All-NBA First Team honors and finishing third in MVP voting. Chicago fell in the second round of the playoffs.
The very next season, “Mr. Air” returned for a partial campaign but wasn’t quite himself. The Bulls lost in the second round again. But when Jordan returned fully in 1995–96, they shattered records. They won 72 games and stormed through the playoffs, going 15–3.
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Golden State’s core, on the other hand, has faced natural attrition. Kevin Durant left. Klay Thompson lost two years to injury. Draymond Green, though still brilliant, aged into volatility. And while Curry remains elite, the Warriors’ run is no longer a straight line.