Claim: The Lakers were in the 1991 NBA Finals as a competing team.

The 1991 NBA Finals was the championship round of the 1990 -- 91 NBA season . It was also the first NBA Finals broadcast by NBC after 17 years with CBS .   The documentary `` Learning to Fly , '' narrated by Jeff Kaye , recaps Chicago 's successful first championship season . The theme song is `` Learning to Fly '' by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers .   The Chicago Bulls of the Eastern Conference took on the Los Angeles Lakers of the Western Conference for the title , with Chicago having home court advantage . It was Michael Jordan 's first NBA Finals appearance , Magic Johnson 's last , and the last NBA Finals for the Lakers until 2000 . The Bulls would win the series , 4-1 . Jordan averaged 31.2 points on 56 % shooting , 11.4 assists , 6.6 rebounds , 2.8 steals and 1.4 blocks en route to his first NBA Finals MVP Award .   The series was not the first time that the Bulls and Lakers faced off in the playoffs . Prior to 1991 , they met for four postseason series -LRB- 1968 , 1971 , 1972 and 1973 -RRB- , all Lakers victories . Chicago was a member of the Western Conference at the time and moved into the East in 1981 . The 1991 Finals marked the first time the Bulls defeated the Lakers in a playoff series .   This series would mark the end of the Lakers Showtime era and the beginning of the Bulls ' dynasty . After winning five championships in eight finals appearances in the 1980s , the Lakers would struggle for the rest of the 1990s before winning five championships between the 1999-2000 and 2009-10 seasons .   The 1991 Lakers were led by Johnson , already in his thirties , playing in his last full year , as was fellow All-Star teammate James Worthy ; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had retired two seasons earlier . The Bulls , led by NBA MVP Michael Jordan and superstar small forward Scottie Pippen , would win five more championships after 1991 in a seven-year span , cementing their status as a dynasty before struggling badly in a post-MJ era that saw them take several years to even become average .   When it was all said and done , Michael Jordan became only the third man in NBA history -LRB- after George Mikan and Abdul-Jabbar -RRB- to capture the scoring title and the NBA Finals Championship in the same season .   Until 2015 , the Bulls were the last team to win an NBA championship despite fielding a full roster lacking in championship or Finals experience . None of the Bulls players had logged even a minute of NBA Finals experience prior to this .