Walking away from the game while worshipped as a god would’ve seemed to be the best way to go out, but Jordan didn’t want it to end there. The shot cast such an immense shadow over the league that the next generation of stars - heck, even an aging, wobbly kneed Jordan - couldn’t escape the comparisons to that version of the man responsible for hitting it. Jordan not only won the title, but ended the Bulls dynasty the way every child fantasizes. That shove cleared the way for that 20-foot jumper and wiped away all of the drama that preceded it. Chicago had to win Game 6, especially with Pippen laboring and possibly unavailable for a Game 7, so Jordan needed to be a superhero. The Jazz had home-court advantage after sweeping the season series and were looking to become the first team to come back from a 3-1 deficit after Jordan - believe it or not - missed a game-winner at the end of Game 5. And by the time he reached the Finals, Pippen wasn’t able to provide much more than decoy services. The Bulls had been pushed to a Game 7 in the Eastern Conference finals against the Indiana Pacers - the first time Jordan had to play all seven games of a series since the 1992 conference semifinals against the New York Knicks.

Scottie Pippen was injured and missed nearly half the season. Jordan was 35, losing his legs and won his fifth MVP off sheer will and an errant jumper. But the shove also represented the struggle Jordan had to endure that season in Chicago. Shoving aside Russell added a few layers of intrigue, because there will always be a debate over whether the shot should’ve been allowed and it only added to Jordan’s mystique of having mind control over officials.

This was Jordan, authoring his own legend in real time, posing afterward to make sure the perfect ending to a legendary career was captured perfectly for perpetuity. This was Roy Hobbs homering into the lights in “The Natural,” Jimmy Chitwood pulling up at the end of “Hoosiers” and Billy Hoyle catching that lob from Sidney Deane at the end of “White Men Can’t Jump.” Except, this wasn’t some fantasy, scripted movie ending.

Jordan’s shot to secure the Bulls’ second three-peat and sixth championship in eight seasons was so exemplary that it made everything that followed irrelevant. Twenty years ago, Michael Jordan hit one of the greatest shots in NBA history.

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