The Orlando Magic defeated the Chicago Bulls in 1995 and served notice their time was next. They broke up before they could be the foil to Michael Jordan.

Michael Jordan had a mountain to climb. The Last Dance makes that painfully clear, spending an entire episode describing that climb to his first championship. The Detroit Pistons were his main rival. They were the old dogs keeping the young pups at bay.

The Detroit Pistons had to overcome the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers to take their turn at the top. The Chicago Bulls had to top the Detroit Pistons. And those battles in 1990 and 1991 were epic — eating up documentary time in both The Last Dance and The Bad Boys.

This story is essential to NBA history. It is a tale that can be retold in several ways throughout the league’s history. The greats always have a mountain to climb.

Maintaining that spot on top of the mountain is the stuff of legends. And Jordan’s time at the top was legendary.

Precious few players leave on top as he did. And as we will see in the concluding episode of The Last Dance, Jordan’s greatness had really no competition. The Indiana Pacers and Utah Jazz both pushed Jordan in his final season with the Chicago Bulls. Those two teams will get more attention put on them than any other team in Jordan’s championship run.

Because the reality is Jordan had no equal. Once he got to the top of the mountain, nobody truly challenged him consistently. There were no rivals.

There was one rival, however, perhaps unrealized. There was one true threat. A team that was not a contemporary of Jordan but a usurper.

That team was the 1995 and 1996 Orlando Magic. It was only Shaquille O’Neal’s departure that broke up the greatest threat to Michael Jordan’s reign. The Magic were the greatest threat to take Jordan’s throne because they were so good and so young.

Their time was clearly next and they were set to take the throne.

A trail of frustration

Like the Chicago Bulls had to overcome the Detroit Pistons to become champions. The Orlando Magic could have been the team to usurp the Chicago Bulls. They were the lone true usurpers in the Michael Jordan era.

They just did not stay together long enough to create the rivalry that Jordan never had in the back half of his career.

That is part of the Jordan mystique, of course. He so dominated the league he left a trail of frustrations and tears for some all-time legends. The disappointment of The Last Dance is that it does not do much to build up his opponents. That might be the point.

The New York Knicks were supposed to be that new team, but they could never overcome the Chicago Bulls, losing most notably in seven games in 1992 and then again in six in 1993. They only reached the Finals in 1994 when Jordan left the Bulls, defeating the Bulls in six that year.

The documentary gave them some due. It spoke about how people viewed Clyde Drexler as Michael Jordan’s equal. Then Jordan stamped that out.

The 62-20 Phoenix Suns led by MVP Charles Barkley and Kevin Johnson were also a serious threat. But the Bulls dispatched them in six games after having a chance to clinch the series in Game 5.

Nobody really rose to the challenge. Jordan departed to try baseball and the Houston Rockets filled the vacuum (and might have given the Chicago Bulls a run for their money if the two teams had actually met in the Finals).

The Knicks finally got their turn in 1994. But they, along with Reggie Miller‘s Indiana Pacers, soon found themselves dealing with a new threat.

The Magic had quickly built themselves into a powerhouse in drafting Shaquille O’Neal and striking gold in the Lottery again in 1993 to draft Chris Webber and trade him for Anfernee Hardaway. Orlando was the upstarts who stole homecourt advantage in 1994, before falling to the more experienced Indiana team.

But in 1995, the Magic shocked everyone. They beat out the Knicks for the Atlantic Division title with a 57-25 record and one of the best offenses the league had ever seen to that point. Anfernee Hardaway and Shaquille O’Neal were virtually undefendable. They could spread the floor with shooters and smart cutting off O’Neal’s growing passing. They had grit with Horace Grant.