It definitely would have been harder for us to keep our team together and win all those titles if players could have moved around the way they can today. If they played today, the Russell-era Celtics also would have had to survive more playoff games to win their championships. The postseason wasn't nearly the long, grueling ordeal for the Boston teams that it has been for Los Angeles and Chicago. In each of their first eight championship seasons, the Celtics had to win only two series to take the title, and they needed to beat only three playoff opponents to win each of their last three championships of the Russell era. By contrast, the Lakers' championship teams needed to win three series twice and four series thrice, and the Bulls needed to prevail in four series in each of their championship seasons.
More opponents mean more of a chance of being beaten.
However, the relative ease with which the Bulls have gone through postseasons during their reign is the one aspect of championship performance in which they have surpassed the Celtics and the Lakers. Chicago is the only one of the three dynamos that is undefeated in the Finals. Astonishingly, the Bulls' title teams have never been pushed to a seventh game in the Finals, and overall they have played only one seven-game series, in the '92 Eastern Conference semifinals against the New York Knicks. Although Chicago and L.A. have won with more ease in the playoffs, Boston was the more dominant regular-season team. The Celtics finished with the best record in the NBA in nine of the 13 years that spanned their dynasty, while the Bulls have had the best record in three of the last seven years, and the Lakers finished on top in the regular season only in the last two seasons of their nine-year run.