The NBA world has long revered the on-court partnership of Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan during their illustrious careers with the Chicago Bulls. Together, they secured six league championships and cemented their legacy as one of the greatest duos in basketball history. However, the relationship between these NBA legends has since soured, with recent comments from Pippen revealing deep-seated grievances.
Scottie Pippen recently made a startling claim in his book ‘Unguarded’ that NBA scorekeepers in 1988 fabricated statistics to favor Michael Jordan for the Defensive Player of the Year title.
“Say I deflected the ball and tapped it over to [MJ]. I should get the credit with the steal right? Nope. More often than not, the steal went into his column in the stat sheet and I could do nothing about it,” Pippen explained. He recounted an incident where a scorekeeper’s partiality was evident. “One night a scorekeeper came into the locker room… to hand the stat sheets to Phil Jackson… I couldn’t believe the look the guy gave Michael: ‘See MJ, we take care of you,’” Pippen said.
The tension between Jordan and Pippen began to surface publicly following the release of the 2020 documentary “The Last Dance.”.
The documentary, which chronicles the Bulls’ dynasty during the 1990s, brought to light various aspects of the team’s internal dynamics. Some of which did not sit well with Pippen, as he felt that the portrayal in the documentary was skewed.
Shawn Kemp Defends Scottie Pippen’s Greatness
During the illustrious tenure of Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan with the Chicago Bulls, some critics argued that Pippen’s greatness was largely dependent on Jordan. However, former NBA star Shawn Kemp strongly disagrees with this notion.
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In a recent appearance on the “All the Smoke” podcast, Kemp expressed his admiration for Pippen, who was recently roasted by his own son. Kemp stated that Pippen’s talents would have shone brightly even without Jordan’s presence.
“Scottie Pippen’s great, man. I played with Pippen in Portland. I’ll just say this. Sometimes, people don’t give Pippen his props. But Scottie Pippen was gonna be a good ball player without Michael Jordan. He would have been a quality ball player without Michael Jordan,” Shawn said.
