Thursday, March 8, 2018

The 45 Most Important Players to the Chicago Bulls Dynasty - #15 Jason Caffey

Jason Caffey
Jason Caffey was taken 20th overall in the 1995 NBA Draft. A Power Forward out of Alabama was exactly what Michael Jordan needed to help him carry this team over the top and start winning NBA Championships again.

In that first year, he had to scrape and claw for minutes as he played in less than 60 games and averaged less than ten minutes per game as a backup power forward, competing with second-year pro, Dickey Simpkins for a majority of the year. His best performance was a game early in the year against the Cavaliers where he put up 13 points and 8 rebounds. Unfortunately for Caffey, the Bulls brought on total piece of crap, John Salley, late in the year, and Caffey was bumped completely from the rotation and would not make the active roster for the playoffs.

In 1996-97, Caffey took his game to another level and started 19 games for the Bulls (including the last 13 of the regular season), played in 75, and more than doubled his per game minutes from his rookie season. He put up a career high 23 points against the Clippers and put up his first three double-doubles.

Although the Bulls again added an extra big man late in the season with Bison Dele, Caffey still started five games as they experimented with bringing Dennis Rodman off the bench. He even put up a double-double in the second round against the Atlanta Hawks. But Caffey did see his minutes take a sharp downturn after that round as he failed to see more than nine minutes in the Eastern Conference or NBA Finals.

Caffey would again put up solid bench numbers for the Bulls in the 1997-98 season but was unexpectedly traded at the deadline in 1998 for David Vaughn and two second round picks. It was a mystery to the players, but it seemed to work out for everyone involved. The Bulls would go on to win their third NBA Championship in a row before the team disassembled after the 1998 season.

And it especially worked out for Jason Caffey, because he got PAID. After joining the Warriors, they signed him to a seven-year, $35 million contract. He didn't even have to play the last two years of that deal as he got bought out by the Milwaukee Bucks.

Although $35 million will pay for a lot, for Caffey, it wasn't quite enough, as he was sued for child support, which isn't too surprising since he had ten children with eight different women.

Now I'm not sure if what I am about to show you is real, was ever real, or could be real in the future, but I want to believe it's real, because Caffey was so hard up for money that he appeared on Dr. Phil, so I really want this attempt to start his own reality show to be true. This was done in 2009, and I see no evidence of an actual pilot ever being made, but this trailer is LIT.

Please let this be from Jason Caffey, and please let this show still come out, using nothing to edit except for a shiny copy of Windows XP and graphics from PowerPoint. I have discovered a lot of great things throughout this series, but this is my new favorite.

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