1997 McDonald's Championship

Summary

The teams that took part in the 8th edition of the tournament were the Chicago Bulls (USA), Paris Basket Racing (France), Olympiacos Piraeus (Greece), Atenas de Cordoba (Argentina), Benetton Treviso (Italy) and FC Barcelona (Spain).

Surprisingly, both the Italian and Spanish champions, traditional European powerhouses Benetton and FC Barcelona, lost their preliminary stage games and were forced to battle for 5th place. The Chicago Bulls instead led by Michael Jordan, and without Scottie Pippen managed to win their semifinal game against the hosts PSG Racing coached by Božidar Maljković, by 89–82. In the final game Chicago Bulls faced European champions Olympiacos Piraeus. The Greek side coached by legendary Serbian coach Dušan Ivković proved stronger than PSG Racing, but the Bulls pulled the best of their abilities and cruised to an easy 104–78 win.

The tournament was noted for having more than 1,000 journalists from 54 countries covering it, more than the previous NBA finals. It was mentioned in an early episode of the documentary miniseries, The Last Dance.

Participants

Bracket

|October 16|FRA PSG Racing| 97|ESP FCB Banca Catalana|84 ||||| |October 16|ARG Atenas|87|ITA Benetton Treviso|78 ||||| |October 17|USA Chicago Bulls|89|FRA PSG Racing|82 |October 17|GRE Olympiacos|89|ARG Atenas|86 |October 18|USA Chicago Bulls|104|GRE Olympiacos|78 |October 18|FRA PSG Racing|78|ARG Atenas|88

|October 18|ESP FCB Banca Catalana|103|ITA Benetton Treviso|106

Final

• Chicago Bulls
  • Michael Jordan 27, Randy Brown 12, Steve Kerr 10, Luc Longley 9, Bill Wennington 8, Toni Kukoč 5, Boris Gorenc 7, Jason Caffey 6, Ron Harper 6, Jud Buechler 6, Scott Burrell 4, Joe Kleine 2, Keith Booth 2, Dante Calabria, Rusty LaRue. Coach: Phil Jackson
• Olympiacos
  • Artūras Karnišovas 19, Franko Nakić 16, Dragan Tarlać 14, Michael Hawkins 12, Dimitris Karaplis 6, Johnny Rogers 4, Milan Tomić 3, Aleksey Savrasenko 2, Nikos Michalos 2, Dušan Vukčević, Efthimis Bakatsias, Anatoly Zourpenko, Nikos Pettas. Coach: Dušan Ivković

Final standings

References

Sources

• 1997 edition

References

1. (21 April 2020). "The Bulls didn’t win just any international exhibition tournament - they won the 1997 McDonald’s Open Championship!". Basketball Network.
2. (16 October 1997). "La NBA vient faire la démonstration de sa puissance à Paris". [[Le Monde]].
3. (19 October 1997). "Bulls add international title to their trophy case". [[The Grand Rapids Press]].
4. (17 October 1997). "Bulls opponent set for semis of McDonald's". Citizen Register.