While the era of their overlapping dominance of the NBA’s Eastern Conference was a brief one, there very nearly was a trade between the Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls that would have changed the course of both franchises once the Bulls had decisively taken the crown by the late 1990s.
The Celtics ruled the 1980s in what often seemed like alternating seasons with their longtime rival Los Angeles Lakers before the rise of Michael Jordan helped Chicago put an end to both of their days of glory. But their era of dominance would come to an end as the 1990s began to wind down, and management very nearly swung a deal with a rebuilding Boston in an effort to hang on just a little longer.
And had that trade gone through, Scottie Pippen might have been a Celtic.
