Scottie Pippen has had a slanting role in the debate between Michael Jordan and LeBron James as the NBA’s greatest player of all time.
Who is the greatest player of all time in the NBA?
This is a debate that will never be settled. One generation would argue with Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Someone else would prefer Michael Jordan. Yet another one went to bat for Kobe Bryant. And there are still more people who will approve of LeBron James.
With James seemingly contemplating his retirement, the GOAT debate has been rekindled with James vs. Jordan asking Scottie Pippen featuring the most difficult yet.
Scottie Pippen supports LeBron James and calls Michael Jordan “horrible”
“LeBron James is going to be the greatest statistician to ever play the game of basketball and there’s nothing to compare to, nothing,” Pippen said. On Stacey King’s Gimme The Hot Sauce Podcast. “Does that make him the greatest player to ever play the game? I’ll leave that up for discussion because I don’t think there is a great player out there because our game is a team game and one player can’t do that.”
Of course, after supposedly withdrawing from the GOAT debate, Pippen proceeded to break down Jordan’s game and made it quite clear which side he’d prefer.
“[Jordan] He was a terrible player. It was awful to play with. It was all one on one. “He was shooting badly,” Pippen said. “Suddenly we were a team and we were starting to win, everyone forgot who he was.”
huh?
Jordan was a two-time Consensus All-American and a two-time College Play of the Year. He hit the winning ball in the 1982 national championship game for North Carolina. And that was before he set foot on the NBA court.
The Bulls did not make the playoffs for three seasons before they drafted Jordan, who was Rookie of the Year in 1984-85, and took them to the postseason immediately.
And yeah, they didn’t do much there because it’s a team game and no player can do it alone. The arrival of Pippen in 1987 was significant, along with the addition of others who would help shape the Bulls dynasty. Jordan needed a team like James needed a team to get over the hump and win championships.
The idea that Jordan was a “terrible” player whose cracks were covered by his own Bulls teams is absolutely insane. Pippen engages in one of the largest cases of revisionist history you will ever hear in sports.
Jordan doesn’t have to be your goat, but he certainly wasn’t a “horrible player.”