when Jordan finally came back. Jordan was obviously not 100% but even with a normal Jordan they might still have lost. They were pretty weak in the front court. No rebounding outside of Jordan and Pippen. Thats why Rodman coming over was so important for them the following year.

I see 30 minutes from Foster and Blount, amounting to only 6.7 boards and 9 points. That was certainly a notably weaker team even with Jordan than the championship teams.

I was too busy paying attention to the Rockets in those years. I remember Pippen complaining about not taking the last shot in crunch time, so I didn't realize how much playing time he got alongside Kukoc based on the minutes.

titles in 94 and 95 regardless. In addition to the Rockets just generally being a bad match up for the Bulls (1-5 versus Rockets during their first three-peat), the 93/94 and 94/95 Bulls without Rodman were pretty weak in the front court.

I would have liked their chances versus any team, including Houston without Drexler.

Now the 94-95 team, yeah that's a different story with Kukoc playing big minutes at the 4.

The Bulls and the Rockets had the same regular season record in 94-95.

Both of them added "really good 2 guards" to make them much better than their record. Drexler was not rusty and he more size/depth around him than Jordan.

They won the title from a #6 seed in the Western Conference. They were the road team in every series - Utah, Phoenix, San Antonio, and then Orlando.

They threw tremendous amounts of shade, too, which was kind of out of character for Rudy T and Olajuwon. Who can forget pissing off the Suns so much that Danny Ainge bounced an inbounds off of Mario Elie's face? [ETA: that was actually the year before] Or the San Antonio series, where Olajuwon removed all doubt regarding his status in the big man pantheon by dominating (and that might be too gentle of a description) David Robinson? And my personal favorite, when the Rockets blared "It's a Small World, After All" as the theme music during Orlando's introduction at the Summit in game 3. The look on Shaq's face was priceless - It was clear that the series ended right there.

Like others have said, the Rockets were a terrible matchup for the Bulls during the first 3 titles. However, while the Rockets beat better teams on the way to the finals than the Bulls did (the West was really strong by then), a Jordan-led Bulls team on a mission was a very different finals matchup from either Ewing's choking Knicks or the really green Magic team led by Shaq and Penny.

I can't say that the Rockets would have won both titles going away, but the perception that Houston's titles are somehow tainted because Jordan was away is grossly unfair to a couple of really good Rockets teams.

* One of the funnier realizations from typing this is that while Kenny Smith gets a bunch of good natured ribbing from Chuck and Shaq on the Inside the NBA set, Smith's Rockets beat both Barkley's Suns and Shaq's Magic on the way to 2 titles.

no matter what version of MJ they had.

Like you said, just a horrible matchup in the frontcourt but it was also a shooting mismatch from 3.

People forget that Bulls team was 33-31 when MJ came back.