The Tim Duncan Dynasty in Boston

Wow, it's cool to see people speculating about the wider NBA. That tempts me to widen the story to cove the rest of the league - but I'm not going to. I tried that with my 84 Draft TL and after 3-4 seasons its impossible to keep track of.

However, that doesn't mean I haven't thought about some things :)

Bmao is pretty close to the mark.

Back in 1998 OTL, there was a lot of speculation and rumours that the Lakers wanted Scottie Pippen.

The trade was Pippen (Sign and Trade) for Eddie Jones and Elden Campbell. This butterflies away the Rice trade obviously. Personally, I think its better for both teams. OTL, the Bulls essentially gave Pippen away for nothing, here they get an all star guard and a pretty good big man. And Pippen is a huge upgrade over Rice for LA.

What's to become of the lockout? Does that still happen in this timeline?

Also, while I think that Jordan and Jackson would retire if Pippen was traded away, Kukoc did stay with the team in OTL, and I also wonder if Kerr and even Rodman would stay if they got Jones and Campbell.
 
What's to become of the lockout? Does that still happen in this timeline?

Also, while I think that Jordan and Jackson would retire if Pippen was traded away, Kukoc did stay with the team in OTL, and I also wonder if Kerr and even Rodman would stay if they got Jones and Campbell.

I'm not sure if they would. Rodman is already 37 years old by the start of the lockout of 99, and Kukoc would probably also leave when there is the opportunity for him to join a contender.

Frankly, I think the Bulls realized that this was going to be the end of an era in 98, and with or without a lockout I have a hard time imagining how the Bulls would convince Jordan not to retire. Once Jordan retires, the game is up in Chicago. Eddie Jones is a good player, don't get me wrong, but that's not enough to convince the rest of the core bulls to stay, never mind Elden Campbell. With Jones and Campbell, I think Chicago is a .500 team, so that they aren't terrible.

I'm not sure that with a POD in 1997, you can avoid the 98-99 lockout. The big problem was the issue of player salaries, and that the players earned 57 percent of the revenue while the owners made 43 percent of it, and that the owners wanted to cut that down, while the players wanted to keep these revenue scales, even though 15 of the 29 teams had lost money.

In terms of how a Tim Duncan Celtics team could affect the league going forward, a renewed Lakers/Celtics rivalry could do something to mitigate the general downward trend of the popularity of the NBA in the immediate post Jordan years not to mention the damage done by the Lockout.
 
The Lockout

The Lockout



During July of 1998, the NBA owners and players fell out over Collective Bargaining and player salaries. When negotiations broke down, the owners took the step of locking out the players, effectively shutting down the NBA. Coaches and players were unable to communicate and training facilities were locked down. For an emerging team like the Celtics, the lockout came at the worst possible time.

Many Celtics players met together and Tim Duncan and captain Rick Fox asked their teammates to work out with them for the duration of the lockout. Draft pick Paul Pierce, young Tracy McGrady and David Wesley all attended the informal ‘training camp’. One Celtic conspicuously absent was young forward Antoine Walker.

There were rumblings coming out of Boston that Walker, who had been the team’s best player before Duncan’s arrival, was unhappy about no longer being the focus of the team’s offense. He was also rumoured to be feuding with coach Rick Pitino. When the lockout was finally over on in early January 1999, Walker showed up to training camp (a shortened two-week period) overweight and out of shape. Walker verbally clashed several times with reporters.

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Reports leaked out that Walker had clashed with Pitino during practices, and had almost come to blows with new teammate Tyrone Hill.

Because of the lockout, the season would begin several months late, on January 20th. There would be a shortened 50 game season and no All Star game. Many felt that the league’s veteran teams like Utah, Indiana and Houston would be advantaged by the truncated season. With the champion Chicago Bulls having been dismantled, everyone knew the 1998-99 season would have a new NBA champion. No one was certain who that would be.
 
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